


^«€i ♦ . _ « O, 



v 



































« • o 



. , o ' , V 

.v^^ci^ v./ ^^kj^:- v..' .v'^ipi^ "^.c^ 





» » 






0> • • • . , 










9 H 












S^ Si • 



» « 




V ♦ V ^ • ©Bra * 






,/ 






«^A 






Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/prophetofflorencOOdenn 



Hol 




Savonarola 



THE PROPHET OF 
FLORENCE 



Mary Putnam Denny 




RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 
BOSTON 



Copyright 1911, by Richard G. Badger 
All right* reserved 



-^'^ 



^ 



r 



The Oorham Pre^s, Boston, U. S. A. 

©CI.A303390 



Dedicated to the Memory of 
My Grandmother 

MARY PUTNAM LEMEN 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 



THROUGH THE MISTS 

THE soft mist clouds touched with a trail of shadow, 
the storied turrets and glistening domes of the 
towered palaces of Ferrara, and far below the 
green and amber of the clinging undergrowth that 
crowned the river banks. On, on, afar the drift of mingled 
blue and broken light waves floated out over the river Po, 
forminga delicate mirage enfolding the heights that crown 
the lowlands. 

There was a movement among the bushes : a youth groping 
to reach a spot where a knotted clump of cypress on a hillock 
made a little viewpoint over the far ways. He stood for a 
few moments, grasping the cypress as if it possessed some 
living power, at one with the spirit of the place, to guide and 
direct, with the dumb expectant air of an imprisoned life, 
waiting for something to break the bars of sense — ^for the 
mists to break over the rift of morning light — the vision 
which, when it opened in its full glory, would yet be but a 
hovering, mystic dream way — unrealized. 

The gray mantle thrown carelessly over head and shoulders 
marked a slight stoop in the figure of the boy as he stood thus 
silhouetted against the dark of the cypress, while the hood 
brushed back from his brow revealed, in dark relief, the 
lights and shadows of a face touched with the world- vision 
of sorrow of the man. Through the long hour he stood thus, 
bending further forward in the strain of expectancy, until, 



6 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

just as the chime of bells from the campanile pierced the 
silences in the valley, the mist-ways lifted, and blended in the 
sunburst of glory over the heights. The boy moved forward, 
then quickly turned from angle to angle to grasp the full 
view of the supernal glory over river and glistening spires. 
It was not until then, as the broken light waves made a halo 
of glory over the mass of brown curls that shadowed the 
delicate beauty of a girl's face — and even then for a moment 
the face and figure did not seem a thing apart from the 
dream — not until her voice, with a pleading note sounding 
in its rhymthic rise and fall as beauteous as the far chime 
through the lowlands, "Girolamo! Girolamo!" that the boy 
felt the presence of the girl apart from the silver fabric of 
the dream. 

She advanced a step toward him; the silken scarf, falling 
back from her, disclosing the full, rounded throat, and 
accentuating, as it trailed over her shoulders, the rich olive 
of her face. The heavy, langourous brows drooped for a 
moment, the whisper of surrender to a love that she could 
not understand; to the vision, the unknown depths of strength 
of Girolamo, who had suddenly become a man to the girl, 
as he towered so far above. Then a change, as a quick wave 
of remembrance, swept with strange power over her. 
"Girolamo! Girolamo!" The words came again, not in the 
soft cadence of pleading as before; there was a subtle change 
of feeling in the note, a trace of coldness that Girolamo had 
never felt before, and it was his face now that drooped before 
this new incarnation of Maria de Strozzi. The scarf trailed 
at her feet, forming a frame to her regal beauty as she drew 
nearer. "Yes, Girolamo, I was there beneath the cypress 
all the time that you stood gazing out toward the mist- ways; 
yet I seemed only one of the shadows to you; you did not 
move or speak." The bitterness in her tone deepened as 
Girolamo, with the old intensity of vision, turned again 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 7 

toward the far-flimg glory of the ghstening distances. ''If 
you only knew — " there was a touch of the old pleading, but 
it was quickly smothered in the feeling that he cared more 
for the beauty of the silvery vistas than for her poor little 
life — "Knew that the great prince of the house of Este has 
even now spoken to the padre — that he sent a coronet of 
roses — " her jeweled bracelets and rings gleaming in the 
soft light as she raised her arms in a little circle to represent 
the rose crown — "on the day of the festa of St. Thomas." 
The softly molded features of her face, that in its delicate 
symmetry yet should be a model for the Madonna of the artist 
Bartolommeo, and through him even of a Raphael, grew as 
passionless as the marble on the floor of the great Cathedral; 
even the gleam from the dark eyes seemed to grow cold; an 
expression apart, it seemed to Girolamo, from the real soul 
of the girl-woman that he loved, as she clutched his very life 
with the words, "And Girolamo — Girolamo! He has gold — 
gold and power and the palace of Ferrara!" 

For a moment Girolamo could not answer. Could this 
be the voice of the real Maria, the voice of the little girl with 
the brown curls, that he had first found that morning of the 
festa, that year that Borso, the natural son of Niccolo III 
had been crowned Prince of Ferrara.^ The nurse had for- 
gotten the child, in the great rush to see the Duke, at the 
moment of the coronation, bow beneath the canopy of gold 
cloth to receive the cardinal's benediction. And the boy 
boy, Girolamo Savonarola, wandering apart from his father's 
party, even then groping in the maze of the visions and 
voices that should deepen with the years, until he stood as a 
man, in the great outer room of sacrifice where every earthly 
voice save one should be hushed in the music of the heavenly, 
found the little Maria, child of the Strozzi, frightened by the 
great crowd as they pressed in toward the piazza, crouching 
under one of the colonnades that had been erected there. 

The year before the boy had m^^de his first long journey, 



8 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

journeying with his father to Florence, where, after the father 
had made his rounds of the shops and prepared his little 
store of goods, they had visited the convent of San Marco, 
and followed, through cloister and cell, the trail of Fra 
Angelico's vision, as his angels and Madonnas shone in their 
first glory of completion on the storied walls. It was at this 
moment of revelation of the beauty of life that the visions 
cast their first dim outline across the shadows, and the boy 
began to dream, without daring to voice the vision in words, 
for the padre had said, in that strong tone that none of his 
sons had ever thought of resisting, "Girolamo, thy elder 
brother shall bear our name forward to honor beneath the 
banners of the house of Este; Bartolommeo shall care for the 
stores and lands, and thou, Girolamo, must realize in thy 
life the highest mission of our house: be a man of letters 
and a physician, as thy grandfather, Michaele Savonarola — " 
to dream of being an artist like unto a Fra Angelico, tracing 
with the soft beauty the mingled glow and shadow of an 
Italian sky as a background, the face of a wondrous Madonna, 
from the light, the pictured beauty, that would some day 
shine through the mists toward him. 

Now, as Girolamo gathered the little Maria in his arms, 
smoothing out the matted curls and wiping the dust from her 
face, and then, taking the tiny hand, guiding her along the 
way, for the first time he voiced the vision of the great picture 
that hung so alluringly in the soft lights and shadows of the 
mists that hovered over the valley of the Po, that morning, 
and weaving a fairy story for the girl as they trudged along 
the sandy path, with the jagged stones cutting Maria's 
little slippers; of the wonderful face that he would paint 
some time; of the gold that would gleam from the curls 
haloing the brow of his pictured Madonna. 

He paused as the clamor of the horses and footmen of the 
festa drew nearer, then turned through a bypath, a shorter 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 9 

way, toward the quiet via, where the villa of the De Strozzi 
stood. It was not until they reached the great place, and the 
little girl stood for a moment in the archway, with the heavy 
stone pillars as a frame to her face, that the thought came 
that this was the fairest face that he had ever seen. Per- 
haps — it was only a glimmering thought that the boy could 
not fully grasp — this face would be the Madonna of the 
picture! But the thought was quickly lost, as the recreant 
nurse, now thoroughly frightened for her little charge, came 
hurrying toward the portals and, grasping the little Maria, 
disappeared in the great hallway. 

'*No! No!" the boy had argued with himself, as he stood 
gazing toward the stone pillars where the face of the girl had 
shone. "The Madonna must be a madre and she was only 
a bambino," (a baby girl). With the unreasoning of the 
child, he could see only the face of the little girl, not see that 
she might grow toward the beauty of the womanhood, toward 
the Madonna of the vision. Through the years that came; 
the long hours out on the sun-warmed loggia, or beneath the 
stone pillars of the villa, or again on the great festa days that 
came every year, with their cloth of gold and gorgeous 
pageantry; as the picture seemed to draw nearer to him, a 
living thing out of the dream mists, he would whisper it over 
and over to the girl each time revealing the deeper beauty. 
She was the Httle Maria to him, the baby girl that he had 
found under the colonnades in the great piazza, until there 
came the first parting,, two years before, and the return 
from her stay with her godmother, in one of the villas of the 
house of Strozzi, on the heights overlooking Florence. 

It was at the vestal service in the Cathedral, that Girolamo 
saw Maria first again, as she moved slowly down the aisle 
to the cadence of the "Ave Maria." The softened light 
drifting from the altar through the dim spaces touched her 
brow, and Girolamo, looking up, saw no more the little Maria, 
but the face of the woman — the Madonna of his dream. 



10 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

There had been other meetings. A moment in the garden, 
when old Tessa, the nurse, forgetting her charge, sat nodding 
in the shadows; a pause in the piazza, when Maria Hngered 
at the stall of the flower vender; then this morning tryst, the 
hour that Girolamo had pleaded for, beneath the heights, 
out on the far banks of the Po, where, in the far illusive 
wreath of mist cloud, the vision hovered. 

Now, as the words seemed echoings back from across the 
drift of water, "And Girolamo — Girolamo! He has gold — 
gold and power and the palace of Ferrara!" some lingering 
cadence in the echo revealed really the voice of Maria. Yes, 
it was the girl, and not some alien spirit that had spoken. In 
one moment he seemed to cross the chasm of youth to man- 
hood; all the passionate longing, the desire of the long years 
of silence, of restraint, seemed to murmur in the one great 
appeal of the man now that she might see the vision, realize 
in life the beauty of the dream, as he raised his hand in that 
supreme gesture of spiritual longing and authority, that yet 
should point thousands toward the opening paths of light. 
*' Maria, Maria, have you forgotten that day, so long ago, 
when I found you beneath the colonnades in the great piazza, 
and, as we trudged homeward through the little path that 
led to the villa, I first told you the story of the picture; then 
that other day, out on the dusty via, when we built with 
stones a copy of the lodge — away on the further river banks — 
where we would live the dream days out, framing the vision 
that would show the world toward God." He paused a 
moment; then in triumphant tones, as if he knew this final 
word would prevail, "Maria mia, can you not see the face, 
now in the far vista of light, lingering in the soft tracery 
of blue and shadow? '* The girl did not look toward the way 
that he revealed, but, covering her face with the scarf of 
silken weave, fell with a little cry at his feet — a cry not 
loud or shrill in its outreach, yet in its deep undertones 
seeming to reach the answering note of Girolamo's appeal. 



II 



THE SHADOW OF A PALACE 

"A maze of corridors contrived for sin; 

Dusk, winding stairs, dim galleries, 

* * * and more strange — 

A recess lurking here behind a range 

Of banquet-rooms. Your finger thus you push 

A spring, and the wall opens, would you rush 

Upon the banqueters." 

A great hush had fallen over Ferrara, from the 
banks of the Po, up through the varied paths 
that led to the city's heart, not a whisper of life 
seemed stirring. The great piazza was empty; 
and the heavy coverings were drawn over the stalls; save 
with the one exception of Bernardo, the flower vender, who 
was anxiously going over the clusters of lilacs, violets and 
jasmine, cutting out the withered sprays, and refilling the 
tall stone vases with fresh water; for the silence and the deep 
underwaves of feeling that seemed to whisper through the 
narrow viae were but the ominous prophecy of another hour, 
which he could closely devine — the hour when the great 
square would be wreathed with roses and the gullies run with 
wine, while the chief via of the city trembles with the tramp 
of the grand procession and the castle walls echo with the 
refrain as the trumpeters acclaim the new master of Ferrara. 
For in the great state chamber of the old palace, Duke 

11 



n THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

Borso, the second of the natural sons that Niccolo III. had 
caused to be legitimized that they might rule the realm 
during the minority of his son Ercole, lay dying. 

It was said of Borso : " He was the Magnificent of Ferrara, 
as Lorenzo de Medici was of Florence; and was so renowned 
for the splendor of his court, and for his abilities and influence 
that in distant lands he was spoken of as the king of Italy." 

In 1452 Frederick HI. had raised the Marquis to the ducal 
dignity, then followed the years of regal power and glory; 
when the palace halls shone as never before with the waxen 
tapers in the great crystal chandeliers, beneath which shim- 
mered the silver gleam of the glittering armor of knights 
returned from tournaments; and the softer beauty of delicate 
gold and Persian silk, as a group of ladies paused before the 
glittering frame that mirrored their beauty in steel. 

"The lady glanced at the mirroring steel, where 

her form of grace was seen. 
Where her eye shone clear and her dark locks 

waved their clasping pearls between. " 

But now the lights were dim, and only the muffled tread 
of palefaced attendants could be heard in the halls. For 
even now before the word had left the lips of the old court 
physician — that death was hovering near — the grandees of 
the court, had deserted the palace and were making forced 
stages over the hills and valleys to meet Ercole in the moun- 
tain pass, whither he was coming from Florence — Ercole, their 
new master; Ercole, the son of another mother, the son of the 
daughter of the Medici, whom Niccoli II., in the face of 
every vow and trust had taken and declared with the sanc- 
tion and authority of the church, his lawful wife. 

The hush around the state chamber deepened; the silence 
far away and unearthly, as the padre, slowly rising from 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 13 

holding the sacrament — the wafer — to the dumb hps of the 
dying man, paced the floor, almost unconsciously moving 
his worn hand over the rosary, striving to breathe out a 
prayer for the sin of the life that was ending in darkness and 
despair. But above the word of petition came those words 
of judgment: "Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
children unto the third and fourth generation of them that 
hate me." It was the thought of a great wrong as it had 
shadowed and darkened the life of the son; of the hour when 
the father Niccolo de Este, just raised to the place of power, 
had used all the strength of the house of Este to crush the life 
of the beautiful girl wife, whose face, with its soft frame of 
curls, which pressaged in the tear mist that hovered before 
the dark eyes, or the tremulous quiver of her hand when 
moved by some deep hidden chord of feeling, a prophecy 
of dim unknown sorrow, had been the dream of the wandering 
musician or artist who lingered for a time beneath the shad- 
ows of the palace. The padre was too lost in these dim 
images of the past reflected in the hopeless darkness of the 
Duke's life to see a dark-robed woman, with a veil thrown 
over her hair and face, glide softly through the portal, and 
kneel in the shadow of the heavy curtains and draperies 
beside the dying man. 

For hours there had not been a stir of recognition on the 
face; only the dim perception of suffering and struggle was 
pictured. Through the long moments of the deep night 
watch, the woman knelt there, fearing to move, to whisper 
through the dark, lest with the return of consciousness there 
should be again the sting of the cruel word of alienation — 
the cry from her child, transformed by the long years of 
contact with the emissaries of his father's cruel court, and in 
the hope and realization of supreme power, into an unnatu- 
ral child, into a man in whose hardened face seemed alone 
expressed the cold materiahsm that springs from a grasp out 



14 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

toward the outer things of sense; the cry even in this last 
earth moment: "Put this woman forth! I do not call her 
mother!" But suddenly the great form of the man was 
wrought in one of the intense spasms of pain, and with a low 
cry, that seemed an echo of the primal longings of childhood 
he reached his hand out through the dark. And involunta- 
rily the hand of the mother closed over that of her child. The 
man's hand clutched a moment in dull pressure as if searching 
out through the dark for the meaning of the strange sense 
of peace that was being borne from afar. Then the momen- 
tary recognition as he looked up into the face of the kneeling 
madonna, who had been to him for so many years but an 
outcast woman, and the word breathed more than spoken, 
"Madre!" 

How the empty things of life fall from us in the one su- 
preme hour of vision! The palace that stretched, in its 
turreted beauty, toward the skies; the long line of wall and 
rampart, over the glistening Po, that marked the boundary 
and strength of the city — all were forgotten now. Borso 
was no longer the archcuke of Ferrara, in the great state 
chamber of the palace, but once more a child out in the 
gardens, looking up into the face of his kneeling mother as 
she knelt over a cluster of lilies. It was only a moment of 
recognition, of love, but in that moment the woman lived 
over again all the gladness of her life, the beauty of her girl- 
hood, the first joy of her motherhood; the short hour when 
she dreamed herself the Princess of Ferrara in the palace 
halls — all, all of life. 

Slowly the earth vision grew dim and the man sank toward 
the last stupor; yet the light of the love that recreates life 
shone upon the silent face. The madre still lingered, hoping, 
longing, for one other word from out of the dark voids, where 
for so long her life happiness lay buried; yet there remained 
only the deepening silence and the dark. Yet she lingered still, 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 15 

till the slow step of the padre sounded nearer, and she could 
almost feel his outreach toward the dying man as he touched 
the heavy curtains. Then the harsh notes of the voice that 
had banished her forever from the palace seemed to resound 
again through the halls; the thought that this moment of 
love's realization was but a part of the old dream, that she 
was but an outcast woman, banished from church and 
throne — that to-morrow, yes, to-morrow, the son of the 
hated daughter of the Medici, she who had robbed her of her 
lover and child, would mount the ducal throne! The light 
faded, the way grew dark again; grief clutched at her throat 
like a heavy mailed hand, and as the padre paused, with his 
hand upon the curtain fold, to whisper another prayer over 
the face of the man who he knew had been swiftly borne 
through these moments far nearer the end, the woman, 
drawing close around her the heavy robe and veil, that she 
might be one with the darkness, and with one last pressure 
of the hand that was now growing cold and still, passed 
again with the flittering shadows, — unseen, unknown — 
through the palace halls. 

If some maid, shrinking alone in a shadowy recess, watch- 
ing for the passing of the silence and the darkness of the 
night of death, waiting for the dawning of the new reign, for 
the voice of Ercole, the son of the daughter of the Medici, 
to raise again the song of laughter, his touch to light again 
the waxen taper and beneath their golden light recreate 
the scenes of life and joy, discerned the lonely form as it 
flitted past from the dim tracery of gold or silver sheen, she 
only thought of it as some phantom from the past, some 
spirit form wafted back to mingle in the dirge of death and 
darkness. 

The padre in the early morning watch, turning the glow of 
the lighted taper toward the silent face of the Prince, knelt 
in gratitude and praise, for was there not expressed in the 



16 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

lingering smile on the face some joy note, the aftermath of 
penitence, of forgiveness? And slowly, as the "Ave Maria" 
of the dawn stole through the silences, intermingled with the 
first prayer for the soul that had passed through the far 
portals, he whispered : " And shewing mercy unto thousands 
of them that love me, and keep my commandments. " 



Ill 



THE MADONNA AND MARIA 



THE first rays of the dawn showed a group of men, 
closely cloaked in their heavy mantles, silhouetted 
against the dark walls of the palace. The elder of 
the group as|he caught a glimpse of the strange 
madre as she sped through the via, exclaimed, "That might 
be the spirit of some fair life — some heavenly madonna come 
to minister in the room of death!" 

Another rejoined, '* More likely the living phantom of the 
Monna Ghita, the real princess of the old Marquis, the out- 
cast mother of Duke Borso, come to join her voice in the dark 
chorus of avenging spirits around her son's bier — " 

"A fantasy," the elder man interrupted; "yet how well 
do I remember when the Marquis Niccolo, then in the first 
glow of his youth, the strongest knight that drew a lance, 
took the fair madonna from the beautiful villa of the Ghita, 
that is situate on the slopes beyond Florence. The family 
were neither noble nor of the contadini, but of those strong 
men of the goldsmith craft, one of the many guilds into 
which the great life of the city is divided. As long as Messer 
Ghita lived, and his strong arm rested in the great hall of the 
villa, the Prince was true to the madonna. It was only after 
Ghita was slain by a sword thrust by an unknown hand, that 
under cover of the perjured word of a false padre the Marquis 
dared to bring the daughter of the Medici into the palace 
of Ferrara. 

17 



18 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

The man paused here and looked up the great via, the path 
of the royal procession, with that dumb expectancy, that was 
beginning to dawn on the people, of the coming through the 
mountain fastnesses of Ercole and the full assertion of the 
power, through the son's strong hand, of the daughter of 
the Medici over the city. "And soon," he resumed, as if 
the others had been following his unspoken thought, "Ercole 
will wed Maria, of the house of the Strozzi." 

"Ah!" Domenico hissed, just as the dark-robed figure 
turned the angle of the walls, and then passed along the path 
close beside them. "Though Maria be a natural daughter of 
the Strozzi, she is not an acknowledged child. It is only 
because of Piero de Strozzi's strong love for her mother, who 
died at the child's birth, whom he might have made his wife 
if she had lived, and because of her own rare beauty, that the 
child has been cared for all these years in the marble villa 
in the Via del Bardo. Even now Prince Ercole openly vows 
to the embassy that has returned from Florence that the 
marriage may not be publicly celebrated for two years, and 
you know what that means with Piero de Strozzi, seized with 
the first stroke of paralysis and the certainty of his death 
within those years; you know by all the dark years of suffer- 
ing, of anguish of the mother of our great Duke Borso, the 
son that lies dying in yonder palace. " In a softer voice he 
murmured: "O that the child woman might remain in the 
marble villa of the Strozzi, in the Via del Bardo!" 

"Might remain in the marble villa of the Strozzi, in the 
Via del Bardo, " echoed through the lonely street, as the woman 
hurried on. Ah! at last out of the dark night of her own 
grief there shone the light of good that she might do, from 
the marble halls of the villa of Strozzi, a beautiful life that 
she might save from the hand of the Medici, from the en- 
throned power and wrong that had wrecked her young 
womanhood. 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 19 

The first gold of the sunrise bathed the white pillars of the 
great villa as the madre paused a moment in the portals, 
then pressed resolutely forward into the open court, where a 
group of noisy servants were chattering over the platters of 
fish, garnished with almonds and spices, and the figs and 
little chestnut cakes for the morning meal. They dropped 
their work, huddling behind the low divan, as the strange 
madonna appeared, with the rich dark tunic and the folds 
of the soft veiling falling back from her silver gray hair, 
disclosing a face with that pecuhar charm of beauty that is 
crystalized by the spiritual, deepened by years of suffering 
and heart grief. The vague awe and fear were only strength- 
ened as the voice of the woman, which seemed in its 
depth to reach some forgotten, far-away chord that they had 
once heard, when the great cathedral chimes rang out in the 
hush of the night, sounded piteous in its appeal: "Can you 
lead me to the child Maria, of theStrozzi? I have a message." 

"Madre mia, it must be the Mother of Christ, or some 
madonna that she has sent, come to show the way to the 
poor little Maria, for I heard her weeping last night when I 
drew back the curtains of the couch and lighted the taper, " 
the little maid Marie said as with one plump hand she 
smoothed out her madre's thin white hair, and with the other 
fingered nervously with the rosary hanging at her side; then, 
rising, she touched the strange madonna's sleeve timorously 
and led the way, past the heavy tapestries and hangings of 
the inner court, up the marble stairway to the dimly lighted 
apartment, separated by the heavy hangings into diminutive 
chambers, to where the daughter of the Strozzi rested. The 
little Marie moved cautiously lest some footstep might 
rouse her master as she passed his chamber, and guided, 
without speaking, to the furthest curtained recess, then 
waited on the outside, for Maria must see only the face of 
the heavenly visitant. 



20 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

For a long dream moment the woman gazed down upon 
the softly shadowed face until the blue eyes opened. For a 
moment there was that first bewilderment that comes on 
waking, as the girl tried to separate the face of the kneeling 
madonna from the dream; then a startled movement, as the 
sight of the familiar furnishings, the morning light touching 
the blue and the gold curtains, brought the reality of the 
presence; then the frightened gaze grew tense and still, as of 
one under a spell, as she looked down into the strange, dark 
eyes of the woman. But as she spoke with the far note the 
word "Maria de Strozzi, " as with the wave of a magic wand 
the terrified look vanished. Again and again the woman 
repeated "Maria de Strozzi — Maria de Strozzi," groping 
through the spoken word toward the meaning of her message 
to the girl life. 

And then, as with a great rush of memories the full meaning 
came, and with it mirrored in the fair face, in the soft languor 
of the blue eyes, pictures of her own life twenty, thirty years 
before — of the girl with the same glimmer of gold in her 
hair, looking out toward the wonder, the beauty hidden behind 
palace gates — the strong surge of feeling overcame her and she 
fell forward with a little cry, burying her face in the folds of 
the coverlid. Maria was by her side in a moment, throwing 
her soft white arms, hanging bare from the loose morning 
gown, around the black-robed figure, bending very near 
mutely trying to enter into the woman's sorrow. At the, 
touch of the girl's hand the thought of the wrong and anguish 
that awaited her grew strong again, and, rising above the 
flood tide of feeling of her own heart's deep sorrow, stretch- 
ing her hand out first to the north casement from which the 
turrets of the palace glistened in the morning light, then as 
her voice came again, murmuring in a hoarse whisper, "It 
is a dark, dark way that leads only to the valley of Despair!" 
her voice rising out of herself toward the heights of pleading 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 21 

as she finished, "Maria de Strozzi, my child, by all the love 
of the Mother of Christ, can you not feel — see? " 

Maria relaxed her grasp as the woman spoke and moved 
slowly across the little space, her silken robe sweeping the 
fur rugs and damask coverings, to the casement, where, 
pulling aside the curtain, she looked out toward the far way. 
The pure transparency of her beauty seemed marred, as 
when some alien covering hides the perfect expression of a 
picture or a floating cloud way shadows the blue heavens. 
She turned again toward the woman. " But, madonna mia, 
the way seems not dark. The morning light is working 
colors of blue and amber over the far spires of the great 
castle campanile" — ^her voice trembled as she continued, as 
if the troubled spirit of the dark- veiled madonna was swaying 
her. "I have the word of the Prince and of the padre that 
the way within is touched with music and the glory of joy 
and life. " 

With a great wave of tenderness the woman reached her 
arms out again toward the girl who seemed to stand across 
a dark void of experience over which no word of hers might 
reach. Then as she tried to whisper in pleading again, the 
hand of the little maid Marie groped through the curtains 
motioning that she must not linger. 



IV 



PARTING WAYS 



IT was the eve of a festa in Ferrara, the great piazza 
was wreathed with flowers, and the triumphal arches 
draped with gold and silver cloth, while from the 
casements of a hundred homes floated the emblems 
of the ducal power of Ferrara. In the midst of the main 
square a pavilion of cloth of gold was raised, as the centre 
point where Duke Ercole should pass in the procession of 
grandees and churchmen, with the gray-cowled friars carrying 
the sacred relics in honor of Saint George. As the evening 
deepens from the casements of the castle flash a thousand 
tapers, while, as a light breeze stirred through the silver 
standards and ensigns of the far minarets and turrets of the 
campanile, it seemed to breathe forth to the waiting city 
the music and dancing within. Below the slight raise or 
miniature bluff, where rose the heavy walls and slender spires 
of the castle stretched a threaded path, the Via del Bardo, 
and near the limit of its extent rose the pretentious villa of 
Niccolo Savonarola, known as the son of the famous physician 
whom the elder Marquis Niccolo de Este had invited to his 
court. 

Madonna Elena Savonarola, the wife and mother, had 
gathered the servants in the rear courtyard and bade them 
be merry there, with nuts and dried figs and a square of 
chestnut cake. Then she moved with quiet yet eager step 
through the villa, with her own hand putting the finishing 

22 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 23 

touch of beauty and repose to the dehcate hangings of 
damask and purple weave, or arranging the roses the maid 
had brought from the gardens in their silver bowls on the 
marble pedestals. When she had finished she extinguished 
all the candles but the one that glimmered beneath the blue 
shade in the great court; then she sank down on a low seat 
near the north casement, alone in the semi-darkness, looking 
out toward the light that trailed down through the valley 
from the old castle. 

The Madonna Elena liked it best : the silence and the dark, 
with the beauty of the far light touching all. For on these 
festa eves there came back the haunting pictures of the old 
life in Mantua, when she was a princess in the palace of the 
great house of Bonaccorsi, beneath the heights of Mantua. 
Not that the Madonna Elena regretted the hour when she 
stole past the mirrored steel and glistening candelabra of 
the silent halls, and out of the iron gateway, and then fear- 
lessly crossed the mountain trail in the darkness of the night. 
No, it was not that. She would not have them again, the 
old days in palace halls. It was only the fond insistency with 
which one eagerly watches a bit of blue sky over far ways 
that recalls some sunlit picture of the past or the moment 
when we linger over the dream, over the picture of a place 
or face that once meant to us the joy of life. 

In those moments when the images, the power of the old 
life, came again the Madonna Elena always cared to have her 
child Girolamo near her. Of all her children he seemed 
nearer to the heart of the life that had once been given her 
in the palace of Mantua. Something in the high, bold fore- 
head, the blue eye that flashed through the dark, the deep 
moments of quiet and abstraction, reminded her of her 
princely father, Bardo Bonaccorsi. 

On the old festa eves the boy always crept in unannounced, 
when he knew, by the gHmmer of the one faint taper, that 



24 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

the madre was watching in the great north casement the far 
glow of the castle light, and would throw himself down upon 
the divan in a shadowed corner of the room, and mutely 
follow her thought back through the years toward the glit- 
tering picture of the old life in Mantua. Sometimes the boy 
would take his lute and play some far-away strain that she 
had taught him to reach toward. 

It was only after Girolamo's return from Faenza with the 
mysterious word treasured, which in after years he spoke 
of thus, "While I was still in the world I went for amusement 
to Faenza, and entering by chance the church of Saint Augus- 
tine I heard a word from an Augustine preacher, which I 
will not tell you now, but which to this hour I have in my 
heart, " that he did not seem to see, with the madre, the beau- 
ty of the palace ways. Some strange, shadowy form ap- 
peared to mar the picture, to stand between the glory of 
glimmering mirror and golden light. It was on the festa 
eve the year before that the son had entered as before, and 
sinking down in his old place on the divan tried to enter for 
a dream moment toward the madre's vision; then an impulse 
— strong, irresistible — moved him, and, rising, with a few 
quick strides over the wide court, he had repeated; "Hora 
novissima; tempora pessima, " (the world is very evil; the 
times are waxing late). 

The madre turned — ^her hands touching, with a tremulous 
move, the folds of soft clinging silk at her feet — toward this 
higher expression of a strange, unknown power in her son. 
He seemed to her as one borne on the far waves of feeling and 
vision toward a shore where she could not follow, each 
moment separating them further; caught in the irresistible 
current of the realization of a world's sorrow which neither 
could stay nor hinder. 

"Hora novissima; tempora pessima," was the hidden 
word that morning from the lips of the dull Augustinian 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 25 

in the great Cathedral of Faenza. Some chance picture 
which the monk had caught, and now carelessly showed, of 
the clank of heavy chains, as he explored the subterranean 
cellars of a palace; the opening of a secret door, and the 
looking down for an instant into the faces of men chained 
to the damp floors, and even as he looked listened to the 
strains of music and joy notes in the royal halls above. A 
chance echo of the world-grief. 

Through the long drawn out moments the madre waited, 
stronger now than the fleeting pictures cotijured up by the 
far light of the castle was the thought of her son; through the 
year that she had mutely watched him drift away from her 
there had been the unvoiced hope that he would return — 
be again the child Girolamo Savonarola, listening at her feet 
when the grand festa eve, with its silences and glistening 
palace lights came again. Now, as he did not enter she 
arose and, stealing softly across the room, lest a heavy 
footfall might break the hush of the place, reached the south 
portals, where, in the garden, just out from the rear court 
she had watched Girolamo walking at dusk. Hoarse with 
the note of appeal came the voice: "Girolamo! Girolamo! 
Will you not come.^^" Then, fearing the answer to her own 
word, she swiftly turned back again into the court toward the 
window seat. After a moment there was the step upon the 
portal; not the glad, eager step, but the movement of hesi- 
tancy. Then for a time he rested, crouching in the old 
pose, in silence upon the divan. 

Now as the madre waited through the silence, there came 
in one great moment of realization, no longer the sense of 
drifting apart, but the sudden, irrevocable thought of separa- 
tion; in some spiritual way the vast gulf had been passed, 
the mooring cast, and no longer in vision and unity of thought 
was Girolamo Savonarola her son. For him lay the far ways. 
With a prophetic feeling out toward the morrow, the hush 



26 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

was broken by a sharp, fierce cry, as of a wild beast suddenly 
bereft of its young, that deepened into a low, half -broken sob. 

Without trying to answer the cry of the madre's heart that 
he might come back, be once again the listening child, he 
reached for the lute upon the pedestal above, and began 
revealing one of those old strains that they had loved. First 
the mingled notes of struggle and striving, slowly leading, 
through the darkened way of suffering and of supreme 
renunciation, toward the place of realization, of victory. 

All the varied beauty of every festa day of the past 
seemed merged in the glimmer of color and pageantry be- 
neath the blue of the April sky this morning, as first came 
the serving maids, in their bright costumes, and carrying 
little woven baskets with fruits and flowers for the shrine 
of Saint George, for the Madonna Savonarola was lavish in 
her gifts to every young girl that served her, and delicate in 
her directions of their thought and worship. Next came the 
elder son, Ognibene, who was in the service of the Prince, 
with his blushing bride on his arm, whom he had a fortnight 
before wedded in Mantua, much to the delight of the madre, 
who rejoiced to see this soldier son, with his clumsy gait 
and heavy brogue, touched with the light and beauty of the 
city she loved. Bartolommeo, the second son, came next 
with his sister, Marie, carrying garlands of roses that she 
was ostensibly taking to adorn the shrine of Saint George, 
but really to heighten the beauty of her silken gown, as 
she waited, with the flower maidens, under the canopy of 
cloth of gold for the troops of knights who guarded their 
chief to pass; among which to Marie, shone alone the one 
with the dark eyes beneath the flashing steel. Last came the 
madre, with the same delicate, illusive beauty, only deepened 
by the touch of years, as when the son of the physician of 
Ferrara stole her from the palace of Mantua; her beauty 
accentuated to-day by the mist of tears that had veiled her 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 27 

vision in the night of sorrow and foreboding. The father 
had already found his place beneath the palace walls, with the 
other leading men of the council, to give the finishing direc- 
tions to designer and page. And no one remained save 
Girolamo, standing beneath the rose hedge in the garden. 
**I will follow," he had answered as the madre looked back 
with the old pleading toward her child. 

It was not until they all had gone, and the hours had 
deepened toward the noon, the great moment of the festa, 
that Girolamo did follow. First he went swiftly through hall 
and court, and last to his mother's chamber, with its delicate 
blue draperies. He lingered here the longest, as in some temple 
where is enshrined part of the vision and the joy of life. He 
took nothing save a haK-finished sketch, a Madonna that 
he had tried to draw from the face of Maria de Strozzi in 
that hour when he had first beheld her, after the return from 
the two years in Florence. 

Then, with a last fond look toward the villa and the en- 
circling gardens, Girolamo followed, taking his solitary way 
by the via, through which the others had already passed. He 
first paused beneath an archway, near the glistening gold 
canopy, where the great procession would reach its triumph- 
ant climax of pageantry. Girolamo stood a little apart, 
behind a group of dark-browed Moors from Granada, as 
the clang of hoof and steel of the mounted soldiery, with the 
Prince of Ferrara proudly towering on his great Arabian 
steed over all, drew near. 

The Prince was arrayed in the armour of a Knight Temp- 
lar of the Crusades, and the dark eyes flashed from beneath 
the ghttering steel with all the bravado and pride of a true 
son of the Medici. His shield had a great diamond in the 
center, and bore the device of the House of Este. He pauses 
and the maidens in the mad enthusiasm throw the garlands 
that were designed for the shrine of Saint George in the way. 



28 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

But for a moment, he does not see the beautiful upHfted faces 
of the devotees of his power. The brilUant eyes peer beyond 
the dusky faces of the Moors on the fringe of the crowd; 
until they flash in one fierce light of recognition upon the 
face of Girolamo Savonarola, the son of the physician of 
Ferrara. It is a Haman searching amid the devoted throng 
for a Mordecai, for the one man who will not bow the knee 
or join the wild acclaim. The man whom the Prince knew 
alone of that great throng, read beneath the glitter and glow 
of flashing steel and jeweled ensign, the true sophistry, nay 
more the innate cruelty of his life. 

Duke Ercole when only a royal Prince, had cowered before 
that fearless face, in the old days, when young Girolamo 
Savonarola had gazed down upon him from his place in the 
great cathedral, and the beautiful Maria de Strozzi as a 
fair flower in some forbidden garden seemed to hover just 
a little way beyond his reach. 

All that the Prince had brooded over then, seemed now 
with his accession to the ducal power, within his grasp. With- 
in two months the bans of his marriage to the Princess 
Eleanor of Arragon were to be proclaimed in the cathedral, 
and who might protest, — the lips of the great Strozzi were 
silent, the padre who stood by the altar in the lonely chapel 
was but his menial whom he could lash into silence, and 
Maria de Strozzi, — with the proud arrogance of his race, he 
scarcely thought of fear of her for she was a prisoner 
watched and guarded in his palace halls, and if she spoke who 
would listen to the word of a poor nameless child-woman, one 
who for some fancy or a promise so unusual to keep in that 
age, Piero de Strozzi had chosen to protect while he lived, 
against the word of a Prince. 

And this Girolamo Savonarola, what was there to fear 
from him now? For he had not heard one secret vow of 
faithfulness; nor beheld the pitiful scene in the little chapel 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 29 

of the convent. There was one thing yet, but in the utter 
darkness of his own heart, Duke Ercole did not think of that, 
as his gaze rested for a moment with the fierce fire of triumph 
upon the face of Savonarola. Grasp what would mean more 
to this son of the scholar of Ferrara, standing as he did on the 
proud heights of truth and rectitude, than any outer tangible 
proofs, his belief in the beauty and purity of the soul 
of the girl, and that no difference how high this son of the 
Este might pile the false structure, that enabled him to 
stand upon a pedestal above her; he could see above and 
beyond it, the vision of some lonely altar — of a broken vow. 

Another moment and Girolamo Savonarola gave the swift 
answering glance, looking down with the fierce fire of his 
clear blue eye, past the mass of falsehood and outward com- 
posure into the very soul of the man. As the steady gleam 
deepened, the face of the young Ruler darkened, and then 
with a muttered oath as he turned from the crowd he com- 
manded the procession to move, realizing as his eyes swept 
the pavement, that in some mysterious way, Girolamo 
Savonarola had read the secret shame and cruelty of his life. 

The crowded piazza, with the loud voices and glow of 
color and light, and the powerful breath of perfume borne 
from the rose garlands, cast a sickening maze over the man; 
while the calm resolution of the night before to this day 
forsake the city for the convent of Bologna now with the face 
of the base ruler of Ferrara, with all his triumphant wrong 
before him, became one wild surge of feeling, to flee from the 
sense of the earthly and sin. 

There were two viae that led out of Ferrara. One by the 
great arena, the other through the winding way which led 
through the new castle gates; and by one of its devious 
by-ways which only a true citizen of the city might tread, 



30 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

through the terraced gardens under the very casements of 
the palace chambers. It was toward this via, that Girolamo 
pressed, for that which in the fierce conflict of his heart he 
dared hope, one last look toward Maria de Strozzi, before 
the step out into the silence of the earthly, toward which the 
hand of the Highest was beckoning. There was only one 
moment to pause beneath the casement, after he had passed 
swiftly, unobserved, through the castle gates, but in that 
moment he seemed to live through again all of the first joy- 
notes of life. 

Then as he reached that state of feeling where emotion 
passes into fixed purpose, came the one thought that some 
way in that great world of spiritual struggle toward the 
realization of the Ideal, toward which the voices even now 
were calling, and the light of the vision was beckoning, that 
he might break the bonds that imprisoned, open the doors 
that shut out the light, that hindered the expression of the 
light and beauty of her life. 

At first there was only the picture of the hanging of cloth 
against the far casement, then a slight movement of the 
golden weave; and as he looked in the intensity of longing 
for one stir across the void that separated their life, there was 
the tremor of a white hand against the fold of gold that 
bound the curtain, a momentary movement as if groping out 
from the dark toward something beyond. It was but for a 
moment, then the heavy fall of the Sentry's footstep upon the 
stone pavement. 

It was far in the night of that day of the festa, that Messer 
Niccolo Savonarola with the Madonna Elena and their 
household from the little chatting contadini maid to the tall 
soldier son, returned to their villa, and not until the full glow 
of the hght of another morning that the madre read on the 
bit of crumpled parchment on her marble stand, a message 
of farewell. 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 31 

Of that day the father wrote afterwards in sadness: *'I 
remember how, on the 24th of April which was Saint 
George's Day in 1475, Girolamo my son, student in arts, 
departed from his home and went to Bologna, and entered 
among the brethren of Saint Dominic, in order to become a 
brother; and left me, me Niccolo della Savonarola his father 
the under written consolation and exhortation for my 
satisfaction. " 

But of the mother's deep heart grief as she sat alone in the 
shadowed room no whispered word could show. 



V 



THE AFTERMATH 



AFTER those first months of silence in the convent 
of Bologna, came a mufiled message of subdued 
sorrow to the lonely household in the Villa at 
Ferrara. It was the aftermath of a spirit, that 
had surrendered all, and was silently looking toward the as 
yet dim vistas of the Eternal. "And dear father, instead of 
weeping, you have rather to thank the Lord Jesus, who has 
given you a son, and then has preserved him to yo for 
twenty-two years; and not only this, but besides has designed 
to make him his Knight militant, (militando cavaliero). * * * 
"Do you believe that it is not a great grief for me to be 
separated from you? But yet, considering that God calls 
me, and that he does not disdain of us worms to make 
Himself servants, I could not be so bold as not to incline 
to his most sweet voice, which says, 'Come unto Me, all ye 
that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take 
my yoke upon you.' * * * I pray you then, my dear father, 
put a stop to your lamentations, and do not give me more 
sadness and grief than I now endure, — not for grief of that 
which I have done, which I certainly do not wish to recall, 
even if I thought I could become greater than Caesar, but 
because I am still made of flesh, as you are, and the senses 
fight against the reason * * * It only remains for me to pray 
you, like a man, to comfort my mother, whom I pray, to- 
gether with you, to give me your benediction: and I will 

32 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 33 

always pray fervently for your souls. Ex Bononia, die XXV. 
Aprilis (Bologna, April 25), 1475 * * Hieronymus Sav- 
onarola, filius vester. To the noble and excellent man Nicolas 
Savonarola, the best of parents, (parenti optimo.) " 

As the loved one, the padre, madre, and the others still 
stand dumb, unanswering, still with the one longing for the 
touch of the hand, the sound of the voice of the lost one. 
Girolamo Savonarola cries out in one last appeal, that they 
see his vision, hear the voices that beckon him on and on 
to the supreme height of renunciation and suffering. 

"Why do ye weep blind ones? Why do ye complain so 
much? If our temporal prince had called me now to gird 
a sword on my side in the midst of the people, and to make me 
one of his knights, what joy you would have experienced! 
And if I had then repudiated such an honor, would you not 
have thought me a fool? * * And now the Prince of princes, 
He who is of infinite power, calls me with a loud voice, 
to gird a sword on my side, of the finest gold and pre- 
cious stones, and wishes to place me among the number of 
His Knights mihtant. And now, because I have not refused 
so great an honor, although I am unworthy, — because I, 
giving thanks to so great a Lord, since he thus wills, have 
accepted it, — you all afflict me, when you ought to rejoice 
and give thanks; and the more you do so, the more you show 
that you love me." 



VI 



THE UNKNOWN VOICE 



SLOWLY the light had led through the long years 
of that greatest of all struggle, the entrance into 
work and life that other minds have planned for us, 
until now it shone with the splendor of the place 
of revelation, over the great monastery of Florence, San 
Marco. 

In those first days at Bologna, Girolamo Savonarola, had 
asked only that he might be allowed to labor in the garden, 
with a few hours given him each day, for deepest meditation 
and solitude, that he might be far away from the touch of 
the world, even from the company of his brothers in the re- 
treat. But as his superior gifts were discovered, this was 
denied him, and he was set over the small school, to instruct 
the novitiates of the convent. Thus he was compelled to 
impart to others, when his own life seemed poor and empty, 
and when his heart was touched with the great longing of the 
life that stands under the first revelation of the Highest, 
that has felt the touch of the Divine and is breathlessly 
listening through the earth voids for the flash of the deeper 
vision, the unfolding of the truth that shines just before. It 
was the cry of a life for solitude, for the hours alone with his 
Lord, in meditation and devotion. 

Yet unmurmuringly Girolamo took up his hard task; and 
sought to lead others the little way that had even now 
unfolded to him. 

34 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 35 

There was the changing path that led through these first 
years from Ferrara to Bologna, Florence, Pavia, Brescia, 
and again at last to the city of the Arno. 

It was in the midst of these strange wanderings, and conflicts 
of the spirit, that he was led to an assemblage of the Domini- 
can chapter of Brothers gathered in the cathedral of Reggio. 
The first stir of interest was directed toward Pico Delia 
Mirandola, a young nobleman from the court of Florence, 
who brought a message to the Brotherhood from Lorenzo 
de Medici. Mirandola's commanding presence, accentuated 
by the glare of jewel and insignia, attracted all, as it was 
different from the sombre appearance of the monks. 

In his short address the words rang clear and sonorous 
in the well chosen Latin periods. He stood a man of the 
world, the world of Italy of that day, with all the apparent 
strength, the glitter and glow, the superficial knowledge, that 
often appeals by its contrast to men who have lived through 
long hours in the shadows. 

Yet while he was speaking, the assemblage by some mystic 
immaterial power seemed drawn from the ghttering person- 
ahty of the nobleman toward another presence. A man 
sitting apart from the others, with his gray cowl drawn over 
his brow. There were other words, from various doctors 
of the church, disputatioiis to the letter of ritual and law, yet 
they seemed to fall unmeaningly on the air. A vast undertone 
of unrest pervaded the room, and through it every soul 
was listening for sonie utterance that would sound a note 
of vision and of power. 

The last point of casuistry is reached, and as the answer 
fades into the empty spaces, Mirandola's authoritative hand 
is again lifted over the assembly; '* There is a voice that 
has not spoken, let us give audience. " 

Slowly the silent monk arose from his shadowed place 
beneath the altar and casting back his cowl, leaned forward, 



36 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

leveling his dark eyes with a free range over the assemblage; 
for a full moment he stood thus, as if summoning from some 
hidden recess of the soul, all the power of expression to voice 
with intensity the message. 

Then with this inward summoning of strength, came the 
word clear and ringing through the dense room — so different 
from the barren echoes of form that had sounded there, that 
it seemed to break a silence: "The church has fallen! Yea 
sunken to the lost estate of doomed Babylon ! There is none 
that doeth good. Yea, the life of the teacher, the prophet 
is unclean!" This last as his face shone with the terrible 
force of his word, as it gleamed down upon the hearers. 

For a moment they trembled under the strong blow, then 
sat as if transfixed, fearing the next word might bring the 
very thunderbolts upon their guilty heads. 

As the speaker sank back into the shadowed place and the 
silence came again, greater and more awesome because in its 
meaning, every one felt the emptiness of their own words, 
their conflict over the outer forms of things, the darkness 
seemed to deepen over all, to overwhelm every life, and rising 
one by one they withdrew into the gardens of the cloisters, 
where the choir boys of the cathedral were singing. 

Until all were gone save the monk with the mystic word, 
and Delia Mirandola, the legate of Lorenzo de Medici. 
Rising with a groping gesture through the spiritual dark, the 
man reached toward the prophet's hand. No longer as in 
that hand clasp he felt the touch of the prophetic that led 
far out through the endless ranges of the spiritual was he the 
Prince among men, the polished poet and wit of the Medici's 
court, but the humble seeker after truth, groping through 
the shadows toward the place of vision. 



VII 



**A place for luxury, the painted rooms, 

The open galleries, and middle court 

Not unprepared, fragrant and gay with flowers." 

IT was a popular saying in Florence at this time that 
one man could move the life of Lorenzo the Magnificent. 
Pico Mirandola and the proud Medici were as Jonathan 
and David. Yet it was only the good of the ruler's 
two-fold nature that went out to the young scholar; that 
beauty that had touched Lorenzo's life from his poet mother 
and was expressed in the soft cadence of the "Nenci 
da Barberino. " "An idyl redolent of the Tuscan soil, 
people and manners," and the "Respetti," which is still 
sung on the far Pistozan hills; or the slow deep measure of 
his spiritual hymns. 

The coarse sensuous vein that had been bred through the 
cruelty and deception of a father's life as he was fastening 
his grip upon the heart of Florence, had deepened in the 
son's life, and in a little while was to find great vaunted ex- 
pression in the open hand of tyranny and the low sunken 
orgies of shame in hidden palace halls, he had succeeded in 
shielding from the face of the friend. 

Other embassies, a message to the court of Mantua, and 
gifts from a newly crowned Prince of a little dukedom among 
the hills, had kept Mirandola away from the palace for long 
months, and now on this November day of the year 1498, as 
he halted at the portals and pressed up the marble steps into 

37 



38 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

the hall that led toward the audience chamber of the j&rst 
citizen of Florence, something — the place of a group of sta- 
tuary behind a partial screen of palms, a scarf thrown over 
a painting, as if to hide their full import from the casual 
visitor, or a snatch of song wafted from the loggia above, 
stirred in Mirandola a strange unrest. The spirit of change 
seemed to pervade the place, that rapid transformation when 
in a day, a week or months by a hurried development of 
hidden inner forces those that we have thought we knew, 
stand forth different in face and voice. Yet the light of 
vision is so dim that we can not understand the meaning of 
the new voice of life. 

Now as Pica Mirandola entered the audience room, un- 
announced, for the dark faced attendant had murmured to 
himseK: "Is he not one of the nearest to the great Lorenzo?" 
he heard the word strong and cutting with all the smothered 
cruelty of the years that he now felt free to voice, as it seemed 
to cleave the air; "A woman, a rejected child of the house of 
De Strozzi ! why should I think of her life a moment when it 
stands between my hand and the unification of the grand 
league. " 

Lorenzo started at the sound of his own words, as he looked 
up and Mirandola stood in the portals, risen to unusual sta 
ture, seeming to tower in his purity of life, far above him. In 
that moment the Medici realized from the gleam in the other's 
eye, that he had sounded the untrue note in his life, yet he 
could not know how far the man had probed to the inner 
meaning of it all. Then came the quick wave of reaction, 
the resolve that the old forms must still be maintained. 
And with an authoritative gesture, waving away the ambas- 
sadors from the court of Ferrara, he advanced toward the 
silent figure in the portal. "What is it for thee, my Pico? 
This other is some troublesome business, connected with an 
affair that I can not fully grasp, some other hour will suffice. 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 39 

Is it a new rendering of Homer from the Greek, or some poem 
of Poliziano's that you would have me note?" 

*'It is of a monk with a message that I would speak. It 
was at Reggio," his voice deepened in intensity as the image 
of the prophet grew clear again, '* where the great chapter 
of Dominicans were gathered in one solemn assembly, that 
the unveiled spirit of the man freed from the confines of the 
flesh, its selfishness, its avarice, seemed to speak to us, speak 
of the mighty call of God to Judgment ! Judgment to begin 
in the high places of Italy upon Priest and Prince if they do 
not turn from the path of vice and wrong!" Mirandola's 
voice sank now toward the intonation of petition: "O 
Lorenzo, he made it so real, so living, that some who had 
touched the far under ways of wrong almost felt the walls 
swaying toward them, and to all it was the gateway of 
Judgment! And O Lorenzo mio! Thou who art the 
Magnus Padre of Florence, may not this prophet who can 
uncover the dark ways of life, and then with prophetic 
power reveal the trail of light, that leads upward toward 
the Heavenlies, stand in the great Duoma, and proclaim the 
truth to the people of Florence?" 

At first a light smile of scorn, of pitying condescension 
for his dupHcity curled around the thin lips of the Medici; 
then as the voice of his friend deepened in petition, his mood 
changed, and he seemed to be carried a little way toward the 
young poet's frenzied feeling. The restless movement of 
one of the embassy from Ferrara for the conclusion of the 
audience, showed hina that Mirandola must be gotten away, 
if he did not sound at this moment the full depth of the cru- 
elty and wrong of the house of the Medici. And advancing 
with a fawning smile, he answered, without fully measuring 
what it might mean to have a prophet in the pulpit of the 
Duoma: "Pico mio, thou knowest thy slightest wish is 
mine; bring whom you will to the great Duoma, he may 



40 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

amuse the young Arrabbiatti with his thunders. And to- 
morrow, yes to-morrow — " turning with an anxious eye 
toward the restless embassy; "we will spend a full hour 
in the garden with Poliziano's poems and translations." 



VIII 



THROUGH SILENCES 



"The solemn peaks but to the stars are known; 
But to the stars and the cold lunar beams. 
Alone the sun arises, and alone 
Spring the great stream." 

IT was in the year 1490, that a message came to Fra 
Girolamo, from Pico Mirandola, as he was leading the 
brethren in the morning chant in the convent chapel, 
coupled with the word of Lorenzo de Medici. The 
padre just paused long enough to take the document from 
the hand of the agitated nuncio and to read across the face, 
the signature of the first citizen of Florence. Then lifting 
his hand in dismissal, he raised his voice toward the far 
ways of the prayer song. 

It was not until the chant was finished, and with bowed 
head drawing the cowl tightly over his face, he passed before 
the brethren, into the open space of the vestibule, that the 
nuncio dared again to break the silence. Ejieeling before him 
and clutching at his robe he murmured: "But Padre it is 
from Lorenzo, the great Medici. Is there no answer? Pico 
Mirandola the poet, bade me wait until you answered. " 

Fra Girolamo for a moment studied the mosaic of the 
pavement without speaking. The servant of the young 
poet added by way of strengthening his appeal: "And my 
master states that there will be horses waiting for you at the 
beginning of the via, when you undertake the journey." 

41 



42 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

Girolamo drew the piece of parchment toward him now, 
and read half aloud the message. And again his gaze swept 
the inwrought mosaic as if in deep study, then throwing back 
his cowl and loosening the robe that cloaked his figure, he 
rose to his full stature, and gazing down toward the nuncio 
with the power that seemed ever waiting in vast hidden 
reserves for his command he answered, "Tell your master 
that I cannot accept his call now, that the dumb faces of the 
sick and the hungry, and the dying in Brescia, and in Pavia 
even to Bologna turn toward me with their unanswered 
pleading, that yonder in the garden stand the novitiates 
waiting to learn the truth more fully. Yea from Brescia 
even to Bologna the need of human life that I must answer. 
And then, if the far voices beckon there, I may follow 
though I will not need the equipages of Lorenzo's court. 
The servant must not be above his Master, as he trod the 
narrow ways, so I must tread each foot of the earth path!" 

"From Brescia even unto Bologna," meant a long way to 
the brother of the Dominicans. It meant journeys over 
mountain and plain to answer some call of need, and long 
night watches, when as the padre waited through the dim 
silences, he could hear that low cry, that to those listening 
through earth voids is the mingled refrain of a world's 
sorrow. 

Thus it was not until the lapse of months, that a muffled 
figure might be seen winding a solitary way along the via, 
that leads through the mountain passes from Genoa to Bologna 
and beyond toward Florence. 

The early twilight in the heights, had touched the way 
when the pilgrim rested for a moment as he looked out toward 
the storied turrets of the city of the Arno. As he stood thus, 
all the weariness of the years of struggle out toward the vision 
of truth and beauty that had first glimmered in the mystic 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 43 

shadowy tracery of the dream, that had floated out over the 
Po, in those far Ferrara days; the conflict with the carnaUty 
and passion of Ufe, as he had tried to lead men upward toward 
the higher ways; the long night vigils; all the hunger, the 
longing seemed to rise as one great burden, a living hand 
before him — pressing him down to the earth. 

For a long space of time, Girolamo knelt thus between the 
dream and the real. In the after while he was never able to 
measure the subdued depth of feeling. Now the sense of the 
vision came nearer, above all earthly voice or longing. It 
was one of those moments when the power of the spiritual 
rises supreme. And far from the opening ways of light 
streamed Heavenly messengers, that silently touched the 
prostrate man — ministering unto him. 

The padre rose in the power of the new strength, yet still 
dazed by the glory of the vision. Then as the mist slow- 
ly lifted, he saw a little way beyond, the face and form of a 
man in bold relief against the chffs, as he bent in rapture 
over some canvas resting against an easel of rock. 

As the padre groped toward the man, he rose and came 
quickly toward him : "Art thou one of the wandering Padre? " 
He asked in a hoarse whisper lest some chance courtier in 
the way might betray his secret; "One of the mystics who 
in these mountain ways reach far toward the meaning of 
life, away from the hollow mockery of things?" As the 
padre did not answer to break the spell, that he was casting 
over him, the voice of the artist grew tenser; "If thou art? 
Listen. I am of the court of Lorenzo chief of the Medici, 
sent by him to the palace of Ferrara, there to paint a great 
picture of the Grand Duke Ercole. There on that 
first morning Ercole himself took me through the main 
apartments, pausing in the great state chamber which with 
the hangings of cloth of gold and the richly sculptured pillars 
I should give as a background for a portrait of the Duke 



44 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

sitting in royal state. Then the Duke let me wander at my 
will through the apartments, guided by a half blind attendant. 

"By mistake, I knew it afterwards from the look of con- 
sternation on the face of the great Prince, as he stood, when 
we emerged, in the half dark of the passage way, summoned 
there by the servant on the discovery of my intrusion, I was 
admitted to a narrow apartment, one of the spaces formed 
by the arches of the palace. As our eyes grew accustomed to 
the dimmed light, the alcove formed the frame for the face 
of a woman, bending over a rosary of pearl, and tracing the 
rhythm of a prayer song as she seemed to follow with rapt 
gaze the slow evolving of faces and the sound of voices — the 
vision in far distances. 

"It was a beauteous face, padre, the fairest I ever beheld 
with the rare blending of light and shadow, of joy and sorrow 
and for a full hour I groped in the shadows, unseen by her, 
striving in a blind faltering way to interpret the dream face 
upon my canvas. Yes, the form is there — " speaking half 
to himself, half to the padre as he turned toward the canvas 
upon the rocks; "but the touch of spirit is lacking, the deli- 
cate tracery which only sorrow can evolve, in the blind plead- 
ing of a life toward the soul of the Infinite. And now the 
door of that palace seems forever closed — " The last 
came in a tone wavering between despair and hope — "Have 
you not heard voices in these far silences and from them 
interpreted life?" 

For answer the padre groped toward the rock, as a man 
reaching out through unknown vacancies toward his own. 
And for a moment held the portrait in still worshipful hands. 
Then through his drawn tightly compressed lips came a cry. 
The form was there, the oval face, and the ghnt of the gold 
in the crown of curls. Yet the subtle touch of other world- 
ism — the beauty of the spiritual that in those dream hours, 
when Girolamo Savonarola had stood near the little Maria, 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 45 

and all was joy and light and the shadows that he could see 
hovering around, trailed back from future distances, was 
lacking here. He did not speak, as the artist drew near 
again, looking, wandering on. It was one of those great 
moments, when the unsubdued longings of life, assert their 
right, when the soul rising above the self imposed fetters of 
monastery or fortress, involuntarily reaches out toward that 
which to it expresses beauty and life. A moment when this 
outreach from the trammels of self, constitutes in itself a 
solitude vast and impenetrable. 

The artist waited in reverence through the silence, it did 
not seem strange to him that the story of the castle, the 
touch of the unfinished picture should so move the padre; 
that this torn fragment from the hidden life in the palace 
of Ferrara, should touch the far, deep heart chords of the 
man's life, that can only be reached by a kindred touch, by 
the outreach of life that has once responded to our own, for 
might not this fancied dweller in the rocks and caves, this 
padre of the mountains, through some mystic medium be 
cognizant with all life, know the threaded way from the 
dweller in the squalid hovels of the contadini, upward 
through the storied ways of Italy's palaces. 

The padre broke the hush as the misty cloud ways of the 
dream way faded again, and instead came the reality of the 
rugged cHffs and steeps of the via toward Florence, with a 
word that seemed cold and harsh, as it echoed through the 
naked voids, that stretched before them, the voids which 
through these moments of communion of vision, the padre 
had passed as a thing apart; and as he came back again and 
felt the cruel thraldom of their confines his own voice sounded 
a thing apart from the true — the inner life: "Nay, Signor, 
I can not bring the far ways toward you. Each soul must 
step out toward the way of vision alone, — alone beneath the 
hand of the great Eternal. Yea, give heed," his voice 



46 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

came hoarse and tense now, as if he were weighing a life in 
the balances; "You have been given in one moment a vision 
of the exceeding beauty, the subdued music of a life in its 
outreach toward the Highest. Yet you could not grasp, 
your hand was too weak to translate one trembling note of 
that beauty — ^that music. To you still clings the heavy dross 
of earth. If you would attain, there lies the long night- 
vigils, the ceaseless prayer ! And then if it moves heaven and 
earth the re-entrance into Duke Ercole's palace prison. And 
the portrayal of her face, the pictured beauty of the 
world's one true Madonna as it is. Ah, more as it will be 
wrought out through the triumphant way of sjiffering!" 

The artist did not answer, as if the padre's words were as 
the far oft thunder of impending war, of conflict that can be 
only understood through the great hours of realization. And 
bending low the padre, replaced the picture upon the rocky 
shrine, and drawing close his cowl and robe around, now 
the strong man once more, upheld by the unseen comforters, 
began the rocky descent toward Florence, toward the city 
that in the far weird spaces of silence that stretched before 
should hear in his voice the interpretation of life. 



IX 



FLORENCE 



"Somewhere a sudden bursting of pomegranate-hearted song 
Such as to sultry-lover throats of Italy belong! 
Ere o'er dome and palace night wraps her silken husk, 
Fiesole's enchanted lights come twinkling through the dusk; 

Already die the distant fires behind the cypress-trees — 
The vesper bells fall silent as the sleeping centuries; 
While empires sink to ashes in the ragged sunset bars." 

THE glory of the sunset touched with glistening 
gold, the far campaniles and castellos of the city 
of the Arno, as the new Brother of San Marco 
wended his way down the last of the Apennine 
slopes. 
Yet the deep vision of the monk of Ferrara saw but one 
spire, the lonely tower of San Marco, that seemed to lift 
itself beyond the other eminences into greater distances 
through the blue of the Italian heavens, by that infinity 
with which we invest temples that are to us the shrine of 
sacrifice — of far devotion. 

Now as the padre drew near the place of devotion, the 
white square of the cloisters, and the arched pillars and col- 
onnades, shone renewed and transcendent in the light that 
had been wafted down "a wake of angel wings," as he sank 
in weakness on the rocks in the far mountain way. 

The gleam over pillar and glistening cross deepened as 

47 



48 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

Fra Girolamo traversed the winding way across the grassy 
inclosure, then up the stairway past the long corridor with the 
dark roof upheld by the heavy rafters. On either side in 
every available space in library, chapel, cloister, dormitory, 
corridor and cell showed the glorified story of a hidden life's 
devotion. Of one Fra Angelico who had wrought for the 
love of his master, in those silences in the years before. 
" Wrought those shadowy Christs, and drooping Madonnas 
with prayers and tears. " 

Each cell with its own picture gleaming through the shad- 
ows, a separate dream caught from the far exalted range of 
vision by the poet painter, and translated for the lonely 
brother in his cell. "The link of fresco extends through all 
that chain of tiny cells along the corridor, — the Sermon on 
the Mount, with Judas wearing a black halo, as the symbol 
of a dead virtue, after the Greek usage; watchful Magdalenes 
and the lily of motherhood, the white Madonna, bending 
to be crowned by her son amid the clouds. " 

On, on until the footsteps of Fra Girolamo and his novitiate 
attendant paused at a cell door, enshrouded in deeper shad- 
ows if possible than the others; from which but one graded 
casement cast a gleam of earth light over a low wooden desk, 
and the vision that Fra Angelico had traced above. 

But to Fra Girolamo as he stood a moment in silence, before 
he consecrated the place with a primal prayer, it seemed lumi- 
nous with light, the abiding presence of the vision, that had 
arisen in the mist encircled ways of Ferrara, to follow through 
valley and deepening trails to the final place of revelation. 

During that silence the white robed young attendant, 
slowly stole away, and as he told the gathered company in 
the gardens below of the strange hush wrought with supernal 
power, that rested over the new brother they drew the line 
of demarcation that separated their life from the life of this 
padre of power and vision, the line that should not be passed 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 49 

until by his great words, he should waft them on the wings 
of prophecy toward the heights. 

Through the long days and nights of the first week Gir- 
lamo Savonarola waited in the constant attitude of prayer; 
the silence only broken in the deep watches by a cry when the 
strong surge of desire seemed to break the bounds of life. 
In prayer unheeding the light footed novitiate as he bore 
the cruse of water and bread into the cell; in another hour to 
withdraw the untouched morsel. In prayer that utterance 
might be given, words freighted with the meaning and the 
power of the vision to reveal the heart of life — life in its 
uplifted beauty and power to sleeping Florence. Florence 
as she lay in the stillnes of the night watches, the resplendent 
glory of palace and cathedral reflected in the Arno's silvery 
gleam. 

At first it was the thought that through the medium of 
another life the message was to be inwrought into the life 
of the great city. Some pictured face showing in the dim 
light of the Duoma; or a sweet voiced novitiate, sent forth 
by the power of the message, to stand in the great chorus, 
as they gathered to chant the Magnificat, and there in the 
interlude of soul-less praise, to send forth one clear, one 
silvery note that would touch resplendent chords, leading 
a peoples' Hfe through the unseen ways of song toward the 
heights of truth and glory. 

It was on a day in April, that Fra Girolamo descended 
into the place below, to the free spaces of the garden. There 
beneath the blue sky that hung as a canopy over Florence, 
and at the foot of "sotto un vosajo did rose damaschine," 
as the old lines ran: "A rose tree of damask roses," he taught 
the novitiates. And unannounced began the impassioned 
appeal to the heart of Florence through the company that 
gathered round. One has thus pictured that scene: "the 



50' THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

roses waving softly in the summer air above, and the lads in 
their white convent gowns, with earnest faces lifted to the 
speaker, what a tender central light do they give, soft heart 
of flowers and youth, to the grave scene: For grave as life 
and death were the speaker and the men that stood round 
and pressed him on every side. " 

When life is stirred to wondrous intensity by some great 
opening vision, the voice in the first hour of expression can 
but whisper out toward the limitless ways. The word came 
now in a hoarse undertone, scarcely audible to the nearest 
listener until through the hours of sympathetic nearness, 
they came to feel out toward its meaning. 

Soon the spaces of the garden were over reached, and the 
permission of the old prior of the convent was given that the 
word of the preacher might be heard in the chapel. For 
hours Girolamo Savonarola hesitated to enter the larger 
place of utterance, for still the far beauty of life, of vision 
rose in a bewildering maze before, and he seemed unable 
to reach the expression of simile or metaphor to figure forth 
its meaning. 

But the hour came when the great gateways seemed to 
swing open, and before the mighty surge of feeling, the voice 
floated out on the far range of figure and story for the listen- 
ing ones. When a moment's calm came he lifted up his 
hands and cried out: "Tomorrow at the vesper hour you 
shall hear all!" 

It was the evening devotion in the convent chapel, of the 
first of August. The padre stood through a silence, his gaze 
transfixed upon a crucifix, his face calm and motionless, with 
that passionless look before a storm, as if throwing the whole 
power of the human into the breach, against the mighty 
voices that clamoured for expression, for already the dim 
premonition of the end, of suffering and death if he revealed 
all, stood in dim outline just before. He looked down at 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 51 

the crowd as they thronged the aisles, above at the circle of 
brothers crowding the walls of the choir, and the inner vision, 
with the voices, came with a mightier force, and bursting 
the bounds of the human rang clear. 

In the aftermath of that hour, it was whispered in the 
piazza and beneath the loggias of Florence by dark faced men 
as they bent over their little stores of goods, or crossed 
swords in the fencing arena : " Una predica terribile ! " '* One 
terrible word!" With a superhuman earnestness, the monk 
directed the three great propositions like sword thrusts to 
the hearts of his hearers: 

"The church of the living God must be cleansed — reno- 
vated and that in our time. 

"Italy is to be scourged before this renovation. 
"All these things will happen very soon. " 

For a terrible hour, he dwelt upon that first word, of the 
sin that waged beneath palace halls; where the cries of out- 
raged life, ascended unanswered toward the Heavens for 
vengeance. Then he carried his hearers to the very portals 
of the Holies of Holies of the Roman church, the See of Rome, 
where in the shadows of the life of the Pontiff, wrong stalked 
unrebuked. 

And then bending his slender frame forward, as if peering 
through unknown distances, his mantle falling at his feet, 
the preacher drew one graphic portraiture of the brighter 
hour, reaching toward the utmost simile of beauty and 
peace of the Hebrew poet: "The lion and the lamb shall lie 
down together," blending as he proceeded the soft hues of 
subdued blue and gold that made the symphony of a golden 
age. 

Girolamo Savonarola paused as the picture glowed living 
and real, then concluded, sweeping his hands with a prophetic 
gesture over the poeple : " I shall continue to speak to Florence 
yea to Florence, until the end of the appointed time. Until 



52 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

eight years have passed, until the Arno has risen three times 
in its course, and until eight seed times and harvest have 
swept over the land. " 

Gradually the power of the life secluded in the convent of 
San Marco began to be felt to the height and depth of the 
life of the great city. Friends and foes, men of the world 
and philosophers, as well as earnest and simple minded 
Christians, continued to crowd around the pulpit of the 
chapel, until it became evident that a larger arena must be 
found for his work. 

It was in the Lent of the following year, that Fra Girolamo 
was called to preach in the Duoma, the great cathedral, and 
now became at once the accepted teacher, and acknowledged 
spiritual power of Florence. 

Slowly the great portrayals, pictures of impending judg- 
ment — impending fires through which a renewed city should 
arise, came nearer to the great heart of the people, until 
some — those who were drawn into the inner circle of his 
life and power, could feel toward the clear vision of the 
prophet, follow the inner struggle of the human with the 
message of the divine. 

During those first days of power in the cathedral, nearer 
and nearer the disciples drew to the more than teacher, their 
minister of the far unseen, and the populo called them in 
scorn as they gathered in the public squares, "The Piagnoni. " 

Now the premonitions of those first days in the convent 
grew clearer and more intense, and the struggle between the 
human and the spiritual deeper. Fra Girolamo finally 
came almost to the fixed resolve, that he would not speak the 
message. Long afterward he whispered of that hour: "God 
is my witness, that during the whole of Saturday and through 
the whole night until the morning I lay awake, and every 
other way, every doctrine and word except that one was 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 53 

taken from me. At day-break, wearied and depressed by 
this long vigil I heard whil'st I was praying, a voice which 
said to me: 'Fool, dost thou not see that God wills thee to 
follow the same way?'" And so that day the word came to 
the waiting ones with far greater power than before. 

It was after that mighty word with power; when the great 
Dunamis — (Powers) — of the first Apostles seemed to hover 
over all, that Pico Mirandola, the poet and ambassador of 
Florence who, touched by the word of the monk of Ferrara, 
in the assemblage at Reggio, had led the way back to San 
Marco and the city of the Arno, pressed near, followed by the 
unsteady footsteps of another. Mirandola drew the preach- 
er apart, and whispered: "Padre mio. It is one Bartolom- 
mio an artist who wishes to speak to thee; he has come a 
weary way through the mountain fastnesses." 

The young scholar stepped aside now to give the artist 
his place, who coming near, without a word as his gaze swept 
the padre's face in piteous appeal, placed tremulously a 
miniature painting with the face of a Madonna in the out- 
stretched hand of the padre. Fra Girolamo held it up 
before his strained vision, in the half shadow; then with a 
strong constraining touch upon the arm of the man drew him 
toward the place of prayer; "You have not reached all," 
he murmured in the hoarse undertone of the shadows, 
"You did not truly see her face. It is only one stricken cry 
of grief, not the glorious symphony of joy and sorrow, toward 
which I know — " the face of the padre shone clear with the 
prophetic glow; "She has reached!" 

Through a long silence they knelt, the prophet with the 
soul of vision, of life — the far meaning of art. And the ar- 
tist with the skilful hand for the outer images of things; 
and then as the bell rang the hour for vespers in the 



54 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

convent halls, both without breaking the hush between 
them arose and turned one toward the lonely cell in San 
Marco; the other toward the devious via, that leads toward 
the mountain heights. 



THE STRENGTH OF TWO 

IN July, 1491, there came a great change in the outer 
forms of the monk of Ferrara's relations to Florence 
and the court of the Medici. The prior of San Marco 
died, and Girolamo Savonarola was elected to fill his 
place as head of the great convent. It was the custom for 
the new prior to do homage to the House of Medici; for 
Cosimo, the father of the Magnificent, had been the second 
founder of San Marco. It was he who had given the library, 
and endowed it with the great collection of Prince Niccolo 
Niccoli. Leaving to the Magnificent to arrange the en- 
circling gardens as a school of art, where he might mingle 
with the pupils. 

But the spirit of the new prior in its solitary greatness 
rose above all power and patronage : "I acknowledge my elec- 
tion, " he said ''as the act of God, and to Him I will pay my 
homage. " As the brothers turned toward him startled and, 
in great alarm, he simply asked, "Is it God or Lorenzo who 
has made me prior?" 

When the Magnificent heard of these bold words he was 
greatly stirred. "You see," he exclaimed, "a foreigner is 
come into my own house, and will not condescend to visit 
me." 

Before this hour, the son of the Medici, had looked upon 
Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the monk of Ferrara, of whose 
power in word and presence, Pico Mirandola, had declared 

55 



56 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

in the audience chamber, as one of the wandering mystics 
of the mountains. A prophet of that higher, far range of 
life and feeling, whose message no difference how clear or 
ringing, could not touch the real underworld through which 
the men of the House of the Medici, moved toward their 
ultimate purpose of greed and tyranny. A message that 
would only stir the upper waves of Florentine life, well to 
attract "certain of the young Arrabbiatti, " as he had lightly 
told Mirandola, well even for himself in those moments of 
abstraction, when the soul of another self seemed to move the 
hand of the proudest son of Florence, and he would pen the 
lyrics and spiritual songs which placed beside the wild carni- 
val songs of another hour, seemed the product of not only a 
different but a mind wholly at variance with the other. 
Some said through whispers of awe, that it must be the 
spirit hand of the poet mother, the beautiful Lucrezia Torna- 
buoni, whose lauds, *'The Birth of Christ," and "The Adora- 
tion of the Shepherds," had met a tender refrain in Flor- 
ence, which moved the man in these other moments. 

But now as the monk of Ferrara, stood in his new place 
of clerical power, and his voice rang clear, "I acknowledge 
my election as the act of God, to him I will pay my homage ! " 
the Medici felt the note of power, that echoed far beneath 
the pretense and outer forms of things, the hollow mockery 
of justice, to that lower depth of life where Lorenzo, no 
longer the first citizen of Florence, but the dictator, the 
destroyer of the ancient liberties of a free city, worked out 
his cunningly laid meshes of tyranny and wrong. 

Yet Lorenzo did not at first openly oppose. He would win 
the man with his strength of spirit and expression to his 
own purpose. He had not yet met the man whom he could 
not at least blind, and in the darkness bend to himself. 

The Magnificent was often to be seen now at mass in the 
convent church; and he further attempted to throw himself 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 57 

in the way of the prior by coming and walking in the con- 
vent gardens. Once he came while the prior was deep in 
his studies in the silence of the dimly lighted cell and a brother 
came running to tell him of the presence of the great man. 
"Has he asked for me?" inquired the prior. *'No, but — " 

"Very well, then, let him continue his walk as he pleases, " 
came the answer. 

During those first days of conflict only once did the 
Preacher of San Marco meet the Medici face to face in his 
pathway; when a word or gesture of meaning was unavoid- 
able. 

It was the dim hour between the light and the dark in the 
gardens of San Marco. Since the hour when the group of 
white robed novitiates had risen from their place at his feet 
on the grassy plot; and filed back through the long corridors 
for the evening meal around the bare white tables, the prior 
had been pacing through the narrow ways, with the thought 
of the great morrow's struggle for the enunciation of the 
living message, and the upturned faces of the eager multi- 
tudes rising like a cloud before him; when as he gazed with 
fixed intensity upon the white columns that bounded the 
cloisters, a dark robed figure seemed to slowly rise out of the 
shadows. 

There was a quick step forward and the face of Lorenzo 
de Medici gleamed toward him. Standing there in the 
dusky hush, each soul aglow with the dominant purpose of 
life, revealed in the silences, there was no need of word, 
each knew, each understood by the great over power of 
expression that reaches above and beyond human speech. 
From that hour the Medici knew that he was unmasked 
before this new found Seer of Florence. 

It was only for a moment that the gaze of the two strong 
men met in that searching out that reaches past the surfaces 



58 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

of things toward the realities of life. Then Girolamo Savon- 
arola drew from his robe the sketch of a Madonna which 
Bartolommeo had left in his keeping that prayer hour, when 
they were alone in the great cathedral. 

One moment the pictured face gleamed in the shadows 
of the gathering night; another and the voice of the prophet- 
monk probed to the heart of the life of the tyrant of Florence 
and the strong power among the cities and dukedoms of 
Italy, he who held in his hand the raveled thread of life 
of the great courts. "You know that by every right of church 
and state Eleanor of Arragon has no place in the palace of 
Ferrara; that Maria, daughter of the house of Strozzi, by 
a valid vow in some far, secluded place is truly the Princess 
of Ferrara. 

"It all came before me, in the still watches of the night — " 
the prophetic glow once more burned forth from the face of 
the padre; "yet not clear or distinct. I could not follow 
all the winding way." There was a stir in the rose bushes 
as Girolamo spoke this last; "Now naught remains, but that 
Maria de Strozzi should be redeemed from the palace cell 
where the power of the Este has sunk her, and stand in the 
robes of her purity and truth, before the life of Italy freed 
from the shadow of wrong. Lorenzo de Medici, you know! 
In spirit I watched the course of the legates from the winding 
mountain viae, even to Florence. " 

A sardonic smile played on the dark face of the Medici, 
as if he would say, "How can you read the souls of men?*' 

The prior answered the unspoken question, "It was in the 
far night watches, that all, all was given!" 

There was a trace of pleading in the strong voice now, as 
if some hidden way of the spiritual might yet change the 
nature of a Medici; "Lorenzo, master of Florence, yours 
may be that voice of freedom, through your secret chain of 
agencies that reaches to the very heart of Italy! You can 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 59 

not reclaim her soul, for no wrong has ever touched its 
purity and truth, but you can grasp a Hfe from the darkness 
of the night, and set it in the Hght of its own!" 

Lorenzo made a step forward as if he would snatch the 
sketch from the prior's grasp, as if it were some magic wand 
of revelation of the very secrets of the soul. But Savonarola 
with an authoritative gesture, his hand uplifted in the atti- 
tude of prayer, held it high above his head. 

Just at that juncture, the bushes parted, and a man 
shrouded in a coarse robe, his hair hanging unkempt about 
his shoulders, his face fixed with the lines of ceaseless vigils, 
and fastings of the penitent, as of some hermit who had 
dwelt for long months in the fastnesses of the mountains, 
sprang forward and fell prostrate and prone at the prior's 
feet. 

Lorenzo now hastily drawing his scarf over his face, with- 
drew through the winding ways of the garden. A hot flush 
suffused his face, as he stood once again in the freer air of 
the open square, surrounded by the retainers who ever hovered 
near their master's presence, for had not some other life 
heard the mad revelations of the prophet-monk of San 
Marco? 

It was a true place for a confessional, touched by the 
other- world silences that crept like a zephyr over the winding 
wind swept paths and above, through the white pillars of the 
colonnade, and over the hedge of roses. 

The Confessor heard naught but the whispered dirge of 
the penitent; "It is the spirit of some fury that is pursuing 
padre, for even beneath the shadows of an altar I betrayed 
the fairest child of all Ferrara into the hands of the black 
hearted Ercole! And before a world, I dare not declare her 
innocence, and his guilt! Is there mercy for one who has 
broken the vows of his anointing, and betrayed the highest 
trust?" 



60 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

The Confessor heard naught else, and in the far afterwards 
never knew the parting time, when the voice of the miserable 
padre, sank into the depths and he was alone with the silences. 

The sound waves of the novitiate choir, chanting the 
Ave Maria of the Dawn, touched the kneeling figure in the 
gardens of San Marco. An upturned face gazing through 
the mists toward the vision of one and over all the light 
that shines from the glory of fulfillment; for the prophetic 
gleam, the vision of life had been given its full meaning 
through the quavering notes of the Confessional — the living 
voice of man. She was free from every touch of wrong, the 
vision true. 



XI 



THROUGH THE SHADOWS 



YET still on the morrow, and the weeks that 
followed, more from the old habit of driving and 
bribing men toward his aims, than from any real 
belief that the prior of San Marco could be 
coerced; for the iron of the power of the prophet had entered 
the Medici's soul, Lorenzo continued sending gifts to the 
convent, which the prior without appearing to know the 
sender, turned over into the general funds of the society. 

"The good dog, " the prior thundered forth one day, in the 
great pulpit of the Duoma when the approaches of the tyrant, 
this perjurer of the liberties of Florence had become more 
and more intolerable, "always barks in order to protect 
his master's house and if a thief comes and throws him a 
bone or anything else to put him off his guard, the good dog 
takes it, but at the same time bites the thief. " 

Lorenzo now directed a great sum of gold to be placed in 
the alms box of St. Mark's church. The clear eyes of the 
prior again recognizing the hand of the tyrant, separated 
the smaller pieces of money, which had been given by the 
humble worshippers to be used for the needs of the convent, 
and sent the gold to the good men of St. Martin's, to be 
distributed among the destitute of Florence. 

Thus in spite of every advance made by the Medici, the 
relentless prior went on and on, every day increasing the 
fury of his cry against the vices of the hour, and drawing in 

61 



62 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

burning letters the tribulation and avenge that he saw in 
the far dim vistas of prophetic vision approaching the de- 
voted city. 

Then Lorenzo sent five citizens of Florence, as if they 
came of their own volition to entreat the prior, for the good 
of the city and the convent to change the tenor of his mes- 
sage. When they came into the presence of the prior, all 
save one lost courage to speak, and as he looking down into 
the clear unclouded face of the man, the face that in its calm 
depths of uplifted faith, had stirred the life of every man 
in Florence who had dared look toward him, attempted to 
frame the message, "Padre, we would not hear thy continu- 
ous voice showing an impending — " could not go on for his 
voice drew thick and hoarse, and trembling and voiceless, 
the strong man waited for the prior to answer his unfinished 
word. In the voice that at first seemed cold and austere, 
yet as you listened was touched with an under wave of kind- 
ness, of compassionate love, the prior spoke: "You are not 
speaking your own thought, but the word of The Arch-des- 
troyer of the liberties of Florence, whose hand touches the 
deep springs of all the hidden life in this great city. Go 
back and plead with your master to repent of his wrong for 
even now — " the hand was uplifted in a far onward gesture — 
"I see the spectre of darkness and despair — the form of a 
sword impending o'er the wretched house of the Medici, and 
through them over Florence!" 

As the prior spoke, the face of the spokesman of the group, 
who was none other than Francesco Valori, one of the boldest 
of Florence, changed and a fire gleamed from his eye through 
the haK dark of the room, as if some spark of life had entered, 
lighting the way toward the higher ranges of faith and vision. 

It was the moment of inspiration of a life. Francesco 
Valori would yet stand as the Simon Peter of Savonarola's 
cause; and his untamed zeal would lead toward great hazards 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 63 

and apparent failures, and yet in the supreme hour cover all 
with the glory of martrydom. 

And still the power wrought by the prophet's word, 
deepened over Florence, yet the Medici found three more 
men to carry his message to the lonely cell of the prophet- 
monk. And flung defiantly to the very heart of the tyrant, 
came back the last message, "Tell Lorenzo from me that he 
is a Florentine and the first man of the city, and I am a 
foreigner, and a poor mean friar. Neverless tell him that 
it is he who is to depart, and I who am to remain; he will 
go, but I shall stay. '* 

With one last burst of fury, mad to overthrow, and yet 
like Herod of old, not desiring to touch with physical force 
the life of the just man, Lorenzo stirred up the Augustine 
Fra Genazzana, he who was reputed the most polished 
preacher and rhetorician of Florence; yet of whom Burlamac- 
chi aptly whispered — "A man endowed with more eloquence 
than with holy doctrine. " 

Ascending the pulpit of San Gallo, on Ascension day, the 
Augustine preached from the text : '* It is not for you to know 
the times or the seasons." Perverting the word he attacked 
the prior of San Marco, denouncing his teaching and life as 
false. So violent and untrue were Genazzano's charges that 
his wrong was self evident and much of his popularity lost, 
many of his former admirers turning away in disgust. 

Girolamo Savonarola's strong answer came the next 
Sunday, preaching from the same great text, showing that 
all he had taught to the listening multitudes, was fully in 
accord with the doctrine that Jehovah God was working out 
in the mysteries of His own Providence, the far ways of life. 

And now as Lorenzo felt the clutch of the fatal malady at 
the heart of life, and the trivial things that had filled his 



64 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

days fell away before the meaning of Eternity, he turned 
toward the man who alone in the great city had expressed 
the far heights of a spiritual strength. 

The hand that had held Florence in the hollow of its grasp 
was trembling, and the bitter word in the mouth of the 
mercenary Genazzano, was the last thrust that he might aim 
at the great prophet-monk. 

As the sickness increased, in April, Lorenzo retired to the 
beautiful villa of Careggi, which was built by his great 
father Cosimo, on the heights overlooking Florence. Here 
his friends surrounded him, and tried to arouse the man 
from the deep despair and darkness that was slowly envelop- 
ing him. But in those hours there was but one cry. It was 
for the presence of Savonarola, the prior of San Marco. 
"Because," he pleaded, "I have never yet found a religious 
like him." 

"Tell him," said Savonarola, when he received the re- 
quest, "that I am not what he wants, because we shall not 
be in accord, and therefore it is not expedient that I come. " 

"Go back to the prior," said the Magnificent, "and tell 
him that at all events he must come; for I want to be in 
accord with him and do all that he shall tell me. " 

The twilight of another day was touching the ruler of 
Florence, and the prophet of San Marco, as they looked 
toward each other again, with the steady gaze, that wondrous 
recognition, when the deep springs of the soul life responds 
to another. But it was not far out in the freedom of the 
convent garden, in the shadows of the white colonnades, and 
clinging, damask roses, but in the heavy curtained apartment 
of Careggi. And the Medici stood no longer in his proud 
towering strength, but lay on the softly cushioned divan, 
while around gathered the darkness of remorse and despair. 

Again there were no words, but as the Medici reached his 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 65 

thin hands out toward the padre, Giralamo Savonarola read 
with the ready intuition, the prophetic power of him who is 
not appointed but born to be the confessor of men — the one 
petition — "Absolution — " and in the shadows of the great 
chamber seemed to lurk the forms of men and women that 
in the great hour of strength, the Medici had crushed and 
trampled upon. 

The pity and compassion of the prophetic life, was tremb- 
ling in Savonarola's accents as he repeated over and over. 
"God is good, God is merciful." 

Then as he stood thus, half kneeling, the faces in the 
shadows seemed to melt into the petition and longing of one 
life whom the cruel soul of Lorenzo the Medici had strengthen- 
ed the hand of Duke Ercole of Ferrara in darkening. 

It was the clear voice of the prophet, the reader of the 
hearts of men, that sounded now; "You must do three 
things. " 

"What are they Padre?" asked Lorenzo. 

Savonarola answered, "First you must have a great and 
living faith in the mercy of God. " 

"In that I have the greatest faith," the ruler replied. 

"Secondly you must restore all that you have wrongly 
taken away, or instruct your sons to make restitution for 
you. And — and — " the padre's voice came now hoarse with 
the strong waves of pent up emotion : " Your life must reach 
out toward the hidden chambers, reveal the wrong of one 
who reigns in the great palace of Ferrara, against the fairest 
child of Italy!" 

Lorenzo hesitated now for a moment, then with an effort 
signified his assent. 

With terrible earnestness now, Savonarola continued: 
"Lastly you must restore liberty to your native country as 
it was in the early days of the RepubHc of Florence. " 

Turning his face now from the padre, the dying ruler 



66 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

refused to speak another word; this last demand was touch- 
ing the heart of the old Ufe of cruel remorseless pride and 
ambition. 

And the padre, with one last pitying look, departed 
without pronouncing absolution. He passed the outer 
portals, where Pico Mirandola stood and turned a pallid 
face, for one word from the chamber of death. 

It was a look from the unreasoning heart of love, from the 
poet friend who could yet see naught but the good in the 
life of Lorenzo the Magnificent, whose master hand had 
seemed to touch the springs of beauty and light in Florence. 

Girolamo Savonarola only drew the man toward the 
clearer light for the moment, then in the trembling under- 
tone of the confessional whispered — "For what is a man 
profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own 
soul.^ Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" 



XII 



AN ALTAR-GLOW 



" *Ricorditti di me' the sound, 
Stole out of deep dumb days remote 
Across the fiery and fatal ground, 
Comes tender as a hurt bird's note 
To where a ghost with empty hands, 
A woe- worn ghost, her palace stands 
In the mid city, where the strong 
Bells turn the sunset air to song 
And the towers throng. " 

THE light of the prophet seemed to shine brighter 
and clearer, as the darkness around deepened. 
For though Lorenzo was gone, his weaker and if 
possible more treacherous son Piero, filled the 
place of the Medici, and at this hour the terrible Alexander, 
whose surname the Borgia, has ever after been a synonym 
for vice and wrong, ascended the papal throne. 

To the padre who stood solitary and alone in the midst 
of the great spiritual darkness, with face uplifted to the 
heavens, "The vision did not tarry. In the very year which 
had witnessed the death of the master of Florence and the 
head of the church, (1492), while he was preaching the Ad- 
vent sermons. In the midst of heaven he beheld a sword 
under which the words were written: 'Gladius Domini 

67 



68 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

super terrain cito et velociter,' (The sword of the Lord 
upon the earth quickly and swiftly.) 

*'At the same time he heard a multitude of voices clearly 
and distinctly promising mercy to the good, and threatening 
punishment to the wicked and proclaiming that the wrath of 
God was nigh. Great thunderings were heard from heaven, 
weapons and fire seemed to fall from the skies, and the whole 
earth became a prey to wars, and pestilences and famine." 

It was on a great morning in the Duoma, that the prophet 
of Florence, gave full expression to this climax of vision, of 
prophetic power. Loud and clear through the subdued 
silence, the depths of the cathedral, freed for the moment from 
the touch of the earthly, sounded the word of vision : " Glad- 
ius Domini super terram cito et velociter." Then came in 
swift climaxes, wave after wave of utterance, the fierce 
arraignment of the wrong of Prince and people, and the 
sure hand of the Avenger over all; but beyond, far beyond 
the peace of the Highest. 

The fierce word of the prophet-monk sank into the temple 
silences, to become a part of the very cathedral walls — 
there to form a unity with the whispered cadences of prayer — 
the vast uplifted longings of life that form the spirit of place. 

All the people had passed out of the portals now, save one 
woman, who from her place in the back tier of seats, crept 
nearer and nearer through the aisles toward the altar. 

The brother came and lit the candles around the place of 
prayer for the evening vespers, and then was gone, yet she 
did not tremble or seem to hear the fall of a footstep. As 
the chimes rang the note of petition, Girolamo Savonarola, 
as the prior of San Marco, came in, followed by a group of 
novitiates. 

Softly again their laud of praise ascended, then touching 
the last wavering sound, the voice of the prior rose toward 
the far ways of prayer. 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 69 

Nearer and nearer the woman crept now, toward the altar 
and the prayer. Then through the long aftermath of 
silence, of subdued prayer, she knelt at the feet of the man 
of God. To her it was the groping out through the darkness, 
toward the meaning of life. Life that she beheld in its 
great abstract meaning, yet did not fully understand. 

It was a picture that a Raphael in some rapt moment might 
have translated for all ages; the hands of the padre uplifted 
through the incense laden air toward the supreme attitude 
of prayer; and the pale distraught face of the woman peering 
through measureless voids of silence toward the meaning of 
devotion. 

The padre did not see the woman, nor feel her presence, 
until he turned to guide the way back through the darken- 
ing portals, and a hand touched his, and a voice sounded 
that seemed to pierce through the far off ways of desolate 
life; "Padre, did you truly mean that the sword of the Lord 
will avenge, can that sword reach to the depths of suffer- 
ing, of wrong?" Her hands were uplifted now, as if they 
might touch the way she pictured. 

Without a word of remonstrance, the wearied padre who 
all day had been listening with sympathy, as he tried to 
bring the heart of the multitude, to the meaning of the 
vision of life in unison with the highest, beckoned the 
waiting brother Dominican, to guide the novitiates away; 
and then turned again toward the dimly lighted spaces of 
the altar, where through the first watches of the earjy winter 
night he listened to the sorrow of a life. 

At the word, "It is Monna Ghita, speaking to you padre, 
who was bereft in one dark night of children, home, all of 
life!" The hand of the prophet, who had reached so far 
in the calms of faith, toward the uplifted sorrow and heart 
anguish of a people trembled and his face paled in the candle 
glow, as through the depths of the cathedral, the refrain 



70 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

sounded the name that he had heard his mother whisper 
in tones of pity and dread in the far mist-shadowed days 
of Ferrara, when he had stood beneath the latticed casements, 
and watched as she followed the wavering lights out toward 
the palace of the Este. 

Now bending low as if mutely bowing before the shrine 
of a life's sorrow, came to the padre through the temple 
silences the whispered struggle and longing of a life. The 
long dream days when she stood before the little court of 
Ferrara as Prince Niccolo's aflianced bride; that other hour, 
when the great court of the palace was a bower of roses ; the 
softened glow over all from the shadowed candelabra, while 
one subtle note of joy whispered through court and 
corridor. The after while that seemed one day of joy, the 
touch of a baby hand, the outreach of supreme possession 
in husband, child and court. Then the blindening moment 
of sorrow and shame, the dark when in one hour, for the 
awful lust of power, all was swept away, and the woman 
stood a lonely exile in the night. 

The hush, the silence in its depth seemed a being to be 
reached out toward now, when the voice of the woman rose 
almost exultantly, "Yet there was an hour between the 
night and the morning light, when my son, he who lay 
dying the great Duke of Ferrara, knew me, and with a 
voice, deeper, higher than earth called me madre!" 

There was another pause, then the voice of the woman, 
seemed to trail backward toward the place of darkness; 
"Is there vengeance for me.^^ You told of the sword of 
judgment, the burning emblem hanging depths over 
Florence, can it not reach beyond, O padre, even toward 
the palace of Ferrara, toward the Prince who reigns in 
the united house of Este and of the Medici, that has 
robbed my life of all?" 

When the padre spoke it was not in direct answer to the 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 71 

woman's cry. For a moment the dim cathedral spread out 
to the far open ways of the river banks; and a face ghmmered 
through the mist ways; while within and yet above the 
chimes that had now begun to sound again from the cam- 
panile, came the rhythm of a voice from across the voids 
that separated that hour of life from today. 

The insistent pleading of the woman aroused the padre 
now, as in a deeper cadence she whispered: "Can not the 
sword of hope and vengeance reach even me?" 

And the padre turned with one last upward look from the 
old life toward the new, toward the press of the eager crowds, 
and the touch of human need and longing. "Woman — " 
his voice faltered, as if passing over voids of feeling toward 
the meaning of her life; "Seek not vengenace for thyself, 
but find the far meaning of sorrow, in love, in deeds of charity 
towards others. Knowest thou the face and voice of Maria 
de Strozzi? Yes, little Maria," his voice whispered the far 
ways; "The fairest child of Ferrara, " clear and distinct he 
gave now the word picture of the child-woman, — the gold of 
her hair against the morning shadows. Then he continued, 
"She who is crushed beneath a weight of shame and wrong 
in the dark palace of the Este, whose young life has felt the 
same iron hand, that has blighted thine own. " 

Slowly now the woman, as if telling an unknown story, 
repeated all the winding way of that morning hour, when 
she had turned from the state chamber of the palace toward 
the villa of the Strozzi. 

As she finished the padre rising to his full stature reached 
his hands out in an authoritative gesture toward the far 
ways: "If thou wouldst find the meaning of thine own life, 
the place where joy and sorrow meet, go seek her out, even 
though in the searching thou be led to the gates of death. 
With all the strength which thou possessest, be thou a com- 
forter, a helper!" 



XIII 



THE SWORD OF JUDGMENT 



THE sword of judgment hovered near. Swiftly 
came the great sequence of events. The historian 
Gibbon speaks of the invasion of the French, the 
expedition of Charles VIII, into Italy, as an event 
which changed the face of Europe. 

King Charles, having finally united the French kingdom 
by his marriage with the Princess of Brittany, now thought 
of eclipsing the renown of the great Saint Louis by an- 
other crusade against the Turks. And took as a beginning 
of the enterprise the vindication of his supposed rights to 
the throne of Naples. 

Urged on by the dissensions within the court of Naples, 
and the constant conflict of parties in the other principalities, 
Charles took the decisive step. "Piero de Medici, was the 
devoted friend of the house of Arragon (of Naples), but the 
city of Florence was equally devoted to the French, and the 
most powerful voice among them only expressed the senti- 
ments of the populace when it welcomed the coming of 
Charles. Venice was neutral, Milan was with them, Naples 
was almost in revolution." 

And as the French king was encamped at Lyons, there 
came the voice of Guiliano della Rooni, cardinal of San 
Pietro in Vincoli, crying out against the cruelty and evil of 
Roderigo, who had ascended the papal throne as Alexander 
VI. The cardinal declared in impassioned tones that the 

72 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 73 

King by this invasion might strike a blow at the heart of 
the man who had defied the truth and purity of the church. 
Yet while all Italy stood thus, part expectant, others fearing, 
one event occurred which showed the terrible cruelty of the 
French armies. The Duke of Orleans repulsed the Neapoli- 
tan fleet at Genoa, then suddenly taking Rapallo, put the 
garrison to the sword, and slew all the inhabitants of the 
town, including forty sick persons in their beds. The 
country was terror-stricken, for though the cause of the 
French avenger might be right, his hand was terrible. 

Up to this hour, Piero de Medici, who was becoming more 
and more but the nominal ruler of Florence, was in alliance 
with Naples, and opposed to the French, while the great 
heart of the Florentine people, always against the slow ap- 
proaching tyranny of Rome, was with Charles in his advance. 

But now in his terror and fear the Medici began to waver, 
and he started toward the French camp, to plead abject 
terms of peace. When Piero stood in the imperial camp 
and beheld the great strength of the invaders, all courage 
forsook him, and without communication with the ambassa- 
dors from the people who stood a little way apart, in their 
haughty silence, he surrendered all the great fortresses of 
the realm, and gave the French real possession of the whole 
country, changing in an instant the French from being 
allies to the Republic of Florence, for the purging of wrong, 
in the high places of Italy, to possible conquerors. 

The cloud that had appeared on the far horizon upon the 
swiftly wafted tidings of the massacre of Rapallo, deepened 
toward the night. And through it all the semblance of a 
sword — a burning incarnate expression of their prophet's 
fiery word of judgment. 

The populace turn now toward the prior of San Marco, 
toward the one great life in whom they could repose. 

As the multitudes thronged Fra Girolamo in the Duoma, 



74 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

he raised his hand out above them toward the dim ways of 
prophecy, of revelation. "Now," he exclaimed, "the 
sword has come, the scourges have begun. It is the Lord 
who guides thine armies, O Florence! The time of songs 
and dances has passed away; it is now time to bewail thy 
sins with rivers of tears. Thy sins, O Florence! Thy sins, 
O Rome! Thy sins, O Italy! are the cause of these stripes. 
And now repent, give alms, offer prayers, become united, O 
people! I have been a father to thee; I have wearied myself 
all the days of my life to make known to thee the truth of 
the faith and of holy living and I have had nothing but 
tribulation, derision, and reproach. May I have at least 
the reward of seeing thee do good works. My people, what 
else have I desired than to see thee safe, than to see thee 
united .f^ Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." 

Then sinking into the deep cadence of prayer, he whispered 
over the silent throng: "I turn to Thee, my Lord, who didst 
die for love of us and for our sins. Pardon, O Lord, pardon 
the people of Florence, who now desire to be Thine. " 

On the fifth of November, independent of the Medici, 
new ambassadors were elected to treat with the French 
monarch. They were Jacopo de Nerli, Piero Capponi and 
the Prior of San Marco, Girolamo Savonarola. The first 
two ambassadors went on in state ahead while the padre 
as was his wont on foot, with no retinue save two of the lowly 
brothers of the convent. The first two, found the king at 
Lucca and there they had an audience with him. 

On the third day, Savonarola arrived at Pisa where the 
French army had proceeded. His arrival was heralded 
through the ranks, who were drawn up in martial array, 
to impress the Florentines with their power. Dressed in the 
simple garb of the Dominican, and with no attendant, the 
prior of San Marco, passed unmoved through the multi- 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 75 

tudes of armed men, with his face upHfted toward the vision, 
lifted higher and beyond the floating banners of the French. 

Arriving at the portal of the royal tent, the prior advanced 
a few paces toward the seat where Charles sat enthroned, 
and without the semblance of ceremony and form delivered 
his commission. 

Clear and true rang out the word: "O most Christian 
king, thou art an instrument in the hand of the Lord, who 
sendeth thee to relieve the evils of Italy, and chargeth to 
reform the church which lies prostrate on the earth! But if 
thou wilt not be just and merciful; if thou dost not respect 
the city of Florence, its women, its citizens, its liberty; if 
thou forgettest the work on which the Lord sends thee, 
then He will choose another to fulfill it, and He will in anger 
lay heavy his hand upon thee, and will punish thee, with ter- 
rible scourges. These things I tell thee in the name of the 
Lord!" 

The power, the personality of this padre of Florence, with 
his strange unearthly message, entered into the French 
monarch's life that day, there to remain a constraining force, 
and a hand deterring him from violence in the fierce days of 
the invasion. 

Piero de Medici, he who had been the autocrat of the city, 
arrived in Florence on the eighth of November. He was 
surprised at the coldness and indifference of the people, 
yet not fully understanding its meaning. With his old 
manner of insolent dictation he appeared at the palace where 
the Signoria (the national council) was assembled. But 
Jacopo de Nerli met him at the entrance and gave an imperi- 
ous wave of his hand in dismissal, in the name of the people, 
and summarily shut the door of the palace in the Medici's 
face. 

The bell of the Signoria then began to ring, and the whole 
populace of the city rushed to the piazza. 



76 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

Now a new message flung out to the populace added fuel 
to the flames. Francesco Valori, the tall commanding 
figure among the five who were sent by Lorenzo on the em- 
bassy to the solitary seer of San Marco, and there as he stood 
boldly forth, yet speechless before the padre, received instead 
of delivering a message that meant the spark of inspiration, 
an enkindled zeal that should ever increasing, lead him always 
in the fore front of the battle, there to risk all the apparent 
safeguards in enfuried struggle, now appeared in the piazza, 
covered with dust, having rode by forced stages from Pisa, 
to reveal the full treachery of the Medici. 

The populace were now fully roused by his message. 
And raising the cry of "Abbasos le palle," (Down with the 
balls), the rallying word of the Medici, they rushed to attack 
their palace. 

No power stayed the remorseless tide of popular 
vengeance, until the Medici had been hurried from the city. 
Then the clear voice of the prophet-monk sounded from the 
heights of the great Duoma, calming and staying the hand 
of vengeance, and preventing the horrors of massacre toward 
the remaining followers of the Medici. 

Fra Girolamo's counsels were seconded by the great Piero 
Capponi, who caused the houses and the dark recesses 
of the narrow streets to be stocked with munitions of war, 
and prepared six thousand men to come forth at a moment's 
notice. 

Now when the advance guard of the French army entered 
Florence, they were astonished at the grandeur of the palace 
and cathedral. A chance happening showed the unknown 
reserves of strength of the Italian city. A false rumor was 
spread abroad that Piero de Medici was approaching, and 
preparing to re-enter the city. Immediately, "The bells 
sounded, the people crowded forth in multitudes clad in 
armor and filled the piazza, the palaces were closed, the 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 77 

towers were armed, fortifications began to arise. When the 
mistake was discovered, instantly the former appearance of 
calm was shown." 

The palace of the Medici was prepared for the French 
monarch, and all the first citizens of Florence stood in state 
ready to receive him. Charles rode at the head of his splen- 
did army; and at his side rode the Cardinal of San Pietro in 
Vincoli. And upon a magnificent charger from Arabia, 
touched with all the dazzling splendor as when the son of 
the physician of Ferrara beheld him in that other procession 
through the great via of Ferrara, rode the Duke Ercole, 

The great army passed over the Ponte Vecchio, "in the 
midst of floral decorations and to the sound of music, through 
the piazza and so on to the cathedral, where they joined with 
the Signoria in public prayer." 

It was a scene touched with the wonder of worship, and 
the rude barbaric clash of human power. The French 
soldiery in a great mass, crushing through the temple aisles; 
while their leaders, with the allied Princes shining like suns 
in the glitter of armor and gold, lead the way toward the 
altar of prayer. The first citizens of Florence crowded the 
inner chapels, and in the centre upon the great pulpit of the 
Duoma that commanded all, stood the prior of San Marco. 

Calm and motionless, for an uncounted space of time, the 
prophet stood thus, looking out upon the motley throng, 
with their ill-concealed gleams of passion and struggle; then 
his gaze swept to the group of leaders, the Princes of the 
people. His look rested in pitying condescension upon the 
face and misshapen form of Charles VIII., the ruler of the 
French. He who might rise to vast heights of freedom and 
truth in the deliverance of the people of God, yet who in the 
crucial moment should fail. And then beyond, until in all 
that crowded assembly he saw naught but the face of Ercole 
of Ferrara, and the Duke with an answering glance beheld 



78 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

only Girolamo Savonarola, son of the physician of Ferrara, 
who by a miraculous reach of power had attained to this 
height of spiritual vision and strength. The one man in all 
Italy whom Ercole knew by some magic of vision, had probed 
to the heart of his wrong and cruelty, who beheld past the 
seeming barrier of palace walls, the life that he had crushed 
and darkened. The hush grew greater — denser until 
trembling from the heart of the people came the un- 
uttered petition — "One word?" 

Now with the prophet's face directed toward the great 
life of the people, as of the heart of longing of one man, came 
the word. Clear and true its vibrant force rings throughout 
the vast cathedral: "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!" 

It was a word that none but the prophet-monk on his 
pinnacle of spiritual power could have dared to have 
uttered, a word piercing the thin masks of pretended good, 
a word breathed out to every potentate, every Prince of 
Italy; and on till it reached the very heart of wrong, cloaked 
under the forms of the church, even a Borgia entrenched 
in the strong hold of the Vatican at Rome. 

The words trailed out through the cathedral; and lingered 
as though they were still living in spoken expression for a 
long dream space; only the uplifted voice of the padre 
leading in the Latin prayer, exiled them to the far silences — 
there to become a glowing unit in the spirit of place. 

There was now the word of benediction, and then the 
clank of steel, as each armed man felt for his sword, the 
martial tread on the pavement and the cry as the hosts 
emerged into the great outer squares: "To the palace of 
the Medici!" 

The next day in the outer hall of the palace, the nego- 
tiations between Charles and the ambassadors of Florence 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 79 

began. The struggle was long and bitter. At first the 
French monarch assumed the role of a conqueror with the 
right to dictate his own terms to a defeated city. But the 
representatives of the people stood strong, proudly resisting 
his demands. 

It was on the sixth day, the ambassadors gathered in the 
great hall of the palace, and King Charles leaning against 
a marble pillar, his hand resting upon a jeweled sword, in 
in an attitude of defiance, that the king ordered the ulti- 
matun to be read. The ambassadors again refused. Charles 
in a passion of rage drawing his sword exclaimed, "Then we 
will sound our trumpets!" 

The proud spirit of the true Florentine, Piero Capponi, 
now broke forth in reply, as he snatched the parchment 
from the Secretary and tore it in pieces, exclaiming: "And 
we will ring our bells!" 

The courage of the strong man won the hour, and that 
night in the softened glow of the great cathedral, the treaty 
honorable to Florence was sworn. 

It was in the aftermath of that hour, of confirmation, that 
Charles desiring word with the man whose prophetic power 
he vaguely felt, turned from the waiting attendants. There 
in the softened light of the Altar-glow, the proud king 
who boasted his right to the throne of the Romans through 
the blood of Charlemagne and the padre whose spirit soared 
above the world of his day knelt. 

Vaguely the prophet pictured the onward course of the 
armies of the French; of the leader who might be for all 
ages styled the defender of the persecuted remnant of God's 
people. His voice sank to a whisper now: " Listen there- 
fore, to the voice of the servant of God. Go forth upon thy 
way without delay. Do not cause the ruin of this city, and 
excite against thee the wrath of the Lord. " 

In the pause that followed, Fra Girolamo looking up toward 



80 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

the face of Charles in its blackness and deceit, as in that 
great hour of prayer with the assembled hosts in the Duoma, 
Duke Ercole of Ferrara seemed gazing down upon him, and 
beckoning a little nearer toward the altar light, he produced 
a roll of parchment, a secret order from Lorenzo to his son 
Piero de Medici, that the beauty and the honor of one Maria, 
child of the great house of Strozzi should be vindicated, that 
through the hidden machinations of their power, the Duke 
of Ferrara should be forced to right his wrong. It was a 
writing found after the riot, when the palace of the Medici 
had been sacked. The padre read the words now in the slow 
measure of the chant; and lifted his voice as he finished until 
its note seemed to pierce the very inner life of the Prince 
"This last thou must fulfill, if thou wouldst not join the 
accursed!" 



XIV 



THE DREAM CITY 



"Rose like an exaltation, with the sound 
Of dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet, 

"From the arched roof, pendant by subtle magic, many a row 

Of starry lamps and blazing cressets fed 

With naphtha, and asphaltus, yielded light as from the sky. " 

IT was easy for the Florentines, under the stir of a 
united impulse to throw off the yoke of the Medici, 
but a very difficult problem to meet the demands of 
the hour, the new conditions of life and government. 
In the midst of the general excitement and discussion 
two great divisions appeared among the people. They were 
led by two eminent doctors in law, — Vespucci and Soderini. 
Soderini advocated the aristocratic form of government 
of Venice, with the great and smaller council. One a popular 
assembly, the other a conservative body, that should decide 
all questions that could not well be brought before the 
public. While Vespucci urged the adoption of a purely 
democratic form of government. 

Now the people, when there was no man in their great 
outer world in whose word they could rest, turned toward the 
dark recesses of the Duoma, toward the pulpit throne for 
help from the solitary soul who seemed to grasp as none 
other the far ways of life. At first the answer came in the 

81 



82 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

minor notes of compassion for the multitudes that were 
destitute and in great suffering because of the pressure of 
the hour. "This is the time," he cried out, "in which 
words must give way to deeds, and vain ceremonies to true 
sentiments. The Lord hath said: T was an hungered, and 
ye gave me no meat. I was naked and ye clothed me 
not.' " His hand reaching out as he spoke in a great out- 
reach of compassion toward a veiled, kneeling woman near 
the altar, who as she swayed to and fro in the anguish of 
an unuttered grief, seemed the very expression of the need 
and longing, the heart of the multitudes. Then he reached 
forth toward the real lords of the people, the heads of the great 
Guilds: "He never said. Ye build not a beautiful church 
or a fine convent. He speaks only of works of charity. We 
must begin in our work of renovation then with charity, 
with devotion toward the suffering of earth. " 

And then in the long hours of soul struggle, as the prophet 
waited in the silence of the convent cell, for the word to give 
to the listening throngs, there came through the dark, the 
delicate tracery of a dream city, the shining domes and far 
glistening spires of that which should be the outward form 
of beauty, of the soul — the spirit of a state, when the Ideal 
should triumph. It was on the third Sunday in Advent, 
1494, that again clear and true came the voice of the vision. 
Before had been the prophecy of the burning sword of 
judgment, now the positive beauty and strength of the true 
state. "The only government that can suit us, " he showed, 
" is the government of the citizen, and that which is universal. 
Woe to thee, O Florence, if thou makest to thyself a head, 
a chief who can oppress and domineer over the rest! From 
these heads arise all the evils that can ruin a city. And 
therefore the first law which thou shouldst make will be this : 
That no one must ever, for the future, be made head over 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 83 

the city; otherwise thou wilt be cast down into the dust. 
Those men who wish to elevate themselves above all others, 
and who can not endure civil equality, are the worst of all, 
they seek the ruin of their own souls and that of the people. 

"O my people!" he cried out, "purify your hearts, give 
heed to the common good, forget private interests; and if 
you reform your city in this disposition it will be more glori- 
ous than it has ever been before. " 

Step by step this higher government was evolved in the 
thought and expression of the prophet leader. Now in a 
great convocation at which only men were present, he put 
forth these four points embodying the principles of true 
government : 

I. "The fear of God and the restoration of good manners 
and customs. 

II. "The love of popular government and of the public 
good, setting aside all private interests. 

III. "A general amnesty, by which they should 
absolve the friends of the past government from all faults, 
remitting all fines, and showing indulgence towards those 
who were indebted to the State. 

IV. "To constitute a form of universal government, 
which should comprehend all the citizens, to whom according 
to the ancient ordinances of the city the government be- 
longed. " 

On, and on opened the way of vision and of power. It is 
said that "Every step in the reconstruction of the edifice 
of Florentine government was introduced by a sermon 
from Savonarola, so that the history of the period can be 
traced in his successive discoures. " 

It was wonderful the flight of this solitary life, upwards 
toward the far ways of vision and of power; and outward in 
expression and meaning toward the heart of the people. 



84 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

Majestic the rearing of the ghstening campanile of the dream 
city. 

Yet none could see with the clear vision of the prophet; 
and all could not follow toward the far ways of expression. 
The outward forms of the vision, the ideal, in their delicate 
tracery of mist and light, their outreach through the shimmer- 
ing beauty of the heavens, were yet shadowy and prophetic. 
The full fulfillment of the prophet's word, waited for the 
unfolding years. 

The first outreach of the prophet statesman, as in this 
troublous hour, his voice rang clear from the Duoma, had 
been toward the heart of the poor and the needy. Now when 
the constitution of the state stood in its seeming completion, 
he proposed the formation of a Monte di Pieta or Compas- 
sionate Bank, where money might be loaned to the poor of 
the city. 

In 1495, a general decree of mercy was extended to all 
the great conflicting parties, that had been driven hither and 
thither by the various decrees of exile. One example shines 
out: "Considering that Messer Dante Alighieri, great- 
grandson of Dante the poet, is unable to enter the city in 
consequence of not having been able to pay the tax imposed 
by the magistrates of last November and December and 
judging it well to show some gratitude to the descendant of 
that poet who was so great an ornament to this city, they 
decree that the said Messer Dante shall consider himself 
to be, and shall, be free from every restriction or hindrance 
whatever. " 

Two great monuments stand forth of this hour of the new 
birth of the Republic; of the far outreach of the vision over 
the heart-life of Florence. The erection of Donatello's 
great statue of Judith slaying Holof ernes; and the comple- 
tion of the Sala del Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred), 
a chamber 170 feet in length and 15 in breadth, which was 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 85 

adapted at the word of Savonarola, from a portion of the 
Palazzo Vecchio left unfinished by the Duke of Athens, 
for the accomodation of the great council. Here centuries 
later, the first Parliament of United Italy, was held under 
King Victor Emanuel; thus blending the dream of a prophet 
with the struggle of his people through the dark years. 



XV 



THE BURNING OF THE VANITIES 

"By the promise of noon's blue splendor in the dawn's 

first silvery gleam 
By the song of the sea that compelleth the path of the rock 

cleaving stream, 
I summon thee, recreant dreamer, to rise and follow thy 

dream. 

At the inmost core of thy being I am a burning fire 

From thine own altar-flame kindled, in the hour when souls 

aspire. 
For know that men's prayers shall be answered, and guard 

thy spirit's desire." 

IT was just that hour in the calendar of the year, when 
all Florence was wont to be given to the dances and 
songs of the great Carnival. The force of the prophet's 
truth and inward purity, and the vision of the far ways 
of uplifted beauty, had been felt to the very center of Flor- 
entine life; and even this Carnival season, when every 
passion in the old days ran riot, was touched and subdued. 

Yet the spirit of the past was strong, and the power of the 
"Arabbiati," the band of young noblemen and courtiers who 
demanded a return to the old days of lawless pleasure, and 
of pitiless exactions from the people, a force. 

86 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 87 

Now to Savonarola came the consciousness that if he could 
gather the children in bands, and slowly open to them the 
ways toward the beauty and joy that hovered far above the 
glitter and glow that masked the coarseness and greed of the 
Carnival days, that the heart of the city might yet be purged 
from the wrong. And then in the days of the Medici, had 
not the boys of the city ran mad in the tumult, and with 
clubs and stones committed the gravest offences. 

With wondrous force to the prophet came the word: "A 
little child shall lead them;" might not the children touched 
and illumined by the vision, lead the men and women toward 
the light. His thought was soon expressed, and gathering 
the children in the convent chapel after hours of teaching, 
all arrayed in white, they were sent on a pilgrimage through 
the viae of Florence, pausing at the door of villa or palace, 
asking for the vanita, for the gold and silver or picture that 
masked evil. 

All through the long days of the Carnival season, this work 
of love proceeded, until when the great day appeared, the 
day for the burning of the vanita, the people were stirred as 
on the celebration of some great festival. 

In the early morning of that day, Fra Girolamo Savonarola, 
stood in the dim glow of the altar-light, administering the 
sacrament to the multitudes of men and women. 

On the outer edge of the throng, stood the tall figure of 
a man gowned in the garb of a wandering artist. He did 
not move, apparently unlistening. As the padre paused and 
looked out over the people, he seemed to see but this one face, 
silhouetted against the dark of the portals. Something i'< the 
trace of a night of struggle from the bounds of self toward the 
Ideal — the mute appeal shadowed forth upon the artist's 
face — rose above the eager touch of the multitudes 

The picture shone clear to the padre again, of that other 
morning in the cathedral, when the artist held the face of 
the Madonna before his strained vision. 



88 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

But the touch of the multitudes was near now, and 
when a pause came again, the dark face against the portals 
had vanished. 

Now the multitudes gather again, forming a solemn pro- 
cession. Burlamacchi pictures that scene: "In the procession 
the boys carried a bambino, full of splendor, which gave the 
benediction with the right hand, and with the left held out 
the crown of thorns, the nails and the cross ; it was of stupen- 
dous beauty, being the work of that most rare sculptor Dona- 
tello. This was supported by four most beautiful angels 
upon a portable altar, very rich and wonderfully adorned, 
and over it a most beautiful baldacchino was supported by 
twelve children. Around these were other children, who 
sang psalms and hymns with sweetest melody. Before went 
the other children, walking two and two in order. Behind 
came the guardians with their officials, men who bore silver 
vessels to receive alms for the poor of St. Martin's who 
received more in that day than they ordinarily did in a 
whole year. Behind these came the men with small red 
crosses in their hands. Last of all came the girls and the 
other women." 

They traversed the narrow streets, taking their way first 
to the Duoma, where was held a service of praise, then to 
the piazza where the great work of the day was to be 
consummated. 

"A huge bonfire had been erected in the centre of the 
square in the shape of an eight-sided pyramid, which rose 
to the height of thirty braccia, or sixty feet, and measured 
at its base one hundred and twenty braccia or two hundred 
and forty feet. Each side had fifteen steps, upon which were 
deposited all the vanita collected during the Carnival; and 
a huge image surmounted the pyramid, which was filled with 
inflamable material." 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 89 

The piazza was thronged. The children were grouped 
on the Ringhiera and under the Loggia de Lanzi, and above 
the turmoil in the square their voices were heard singing 
Psalms. 

Now a signal is given, and the four guardians step forward 
to set fire to the four corners of the pyramid. Just at this 
moment a man, rushing breathlessly forward, having trav- 
versed the long city via toward the great piazza, raises his 
hand in a gesture of authority for the guardians to wait one 
moment before the torch is applied. Then he raises high 
above the people his vanita. 

The multitudes stand speechless for an instant, for it 
is the first artist of Florence casting his work into the flames. 
Some even step forward as if they would deter him, but he 
motions them away, with a sweep of his proud hand, and 
throwing the work into the centre of the pyre, he waves 
the guardians to proceed. Then reaching toward the Loggia 
de Lougi, where Fra Girolamo Savonarola stood a minis- 
tering spirit over all, he rends his robe and casting himself 
at the padre's feet murmurs: "Padre mio, it is finished! I 
have destroyed all the old vanita of the empty years ! " 

At that moment as if in answer to the voice of the man, 
"The smoke and flames leapt up into the air and the trump- 
eters of the Signoria blew a blast, the bells of the Palazzo 
rang out, " and the multitudes gave vent to the suppressed 
shout of rejoicing. 

And against the fire-glow the face of the Prophet of Flor- 
ence; and the wandering artist — the man who had struggled 
through the dark toward the seer's place of vision — shone as 
if transfigured. 



XVI 



THE TRIAL BY FIRE 



SLOWLY the way was being prepared toward the 
place of supreme devotion. The clash of opposing 
parties raged around; while in the dim vistas of vision 
shone the word: "Greater love hath no man than 
this, that a man lay down his life for his friend," for the 
truth, for God. 

The vision of the Cross, had glimmered before the prophet 
in those days when all Florence listened to catch the least 
sound of his voice and now as it grew nearer, and nearer, 
there was no hesitancy or fear. 

Alexander VI, the infamous Borgia in the Vatican at Rome, 
had stretched forth the utmost power of excummunication 
against the prophet of Florence, against the purest life in 
all Christendom. And the Signoria forbade him for a time, 
to minister as of old in the great Duoma. Yet the soul of 
the solitary man of God rose triumphant over all. 

And it was in this hour, amid the tumult and agitation, 
that Savonarola was preparing the "Trionfo della Croce, " 
one of the first great works giving the accord of the Gospel 
of the Christ with the reason of man, " showing that while 
it is above reason it is not contrary to it. " 

Now a chance happening brought quickly forward the 
hour of suffering. Fra Domenico Buonivicenti, Savonarola's 
devoted disciple and brother in the convent, was preaching 
and teaching at Prato, when a certain Fra Francesco di 

90 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 91 

Puglia, a Franciscan who was preaching in the same town, 
violently attacked the prior of San Marco. Domenico with 
his warm nature all ablaze with zeal, made an immediate 
defense of his prior. This led to other hot words, until 
Francesco declared that he was ready to undergo an ordeal 
by fire with his opponent, to show the world the justness of 
his attack upon the great teacher of Florence. Era Domeni- 
co quickly accepted his challenge and a day was set, but the 
Francescan managed to evade, by pleading that he must 
depart elsewhere upon important business. 

This incident would have been forgotten but in the Lent 
of 1498, the same Francescan at Santa Croce, again attacked 
the prior of San Marco, declaring that he was a heretic, a 
schismatic, and a false prophet. And now challenging the 
great padre himself to the ordeal. Era Domenico's brave 
voice was again heard, declaring that he himself should be 
allowed to take the challenge, as it was a controversy between 
he and the Francescan and not with his prior. The enemies 
of the prophet-monk now caught at what seemed the great 
opportunity of forever silencing the mighty voice that had 
been raised against them. Savonarola himself must be made 
to undergo the ordeal. They whispered; "If Savonarola 
ventures to enter the fire, he will be burned. If he refuses 
his credit with the populace will be gone forever." 

The shadows deepened, until an actual order from the 
Signoria declared that the event must be enacted. The 
prior of San Marco, must show the truth of his great utter- 
ances. Though it was not clear in Girolamo Savonarola's 
mind that this was the hour in which God would show a 
miracle, he could not hesitate when a great ordeal of faith 
seemed to arise. 

The morning of the Sixth of April, the day chosen by the 
Signoria slowly dawned. "The place appointed for the 



92 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

ordeal was a platform about eighty feet in length, ten in 
breadth, and three in height, which extended from the Tetto 
di Pisono, on the western side of the piazza, to the Marzocco, 
the marble lion, which stands in front of thePalazzaVecchio. 
The platform was covered with earth and bricks, and was 
piled up with wood and other more combustible materials, 
leaving a passage in the middle, four feet in width, for the 
two men to walk in. It was arranged that it should be light- 
ed at one end, that they should enter at the other, and that 
then the pile should be lighted behind them. " 

In the early morning, just as the sun rose over the northern 
hills, the chimes called the brethren of San Marco to prayer. 
They obeyed the call, their faces aglow with triumph, which 
came from the hope of certain victory. 

Yet to the great leader as he stood in the dim shadows of 
the altar, it was an awful moment opening toward vast 
mystic ways of suffering and sorrow. " I know not, " he said, 
his voice rising above the hush of prayer, down the silences 
of the aisles, *'That the ordeal will take place, because this 
matter does not depend upon us; but I am able to tell you 
that, if we come to the event, the victory will certainly be 
ours. O Lord, we have no need of these miraculous proofs 
in order to believe in the truth; but we have been challenged, 
and we could not refuse to defend Thine honor! We go to 
do battle for Thee, — O Lord this people wishes only to serve 
Thee !" Then with one great outreach toward the listening 
ones he pleaded; "My people, are you willing to serve God?" 
Every voice answered, "Yes!" 

In a lower voice the padre besought the kneeling women 
to continue in devotion until they returned from the place 
of trial. In the shadowed recesses of the 'chapel they knelt, 
their faces uplifted in the supreme devotion of unuttered 
prayer. 

Savonarola's party formed their procession in the piazza 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 93 

of San Marco "First came the acolytes, and after them the 
friars; last of these Fra Domenico, attired in a red vestment 
with a crucifix in his hand, a deacon and a sub-deacon walk- 
ing on either side of him. Last of all came Savonarola, in a 
white cope, bearing in his hand a silver reliquary which con- 
tained the blessed Sacrament; on one side of him Fra Frances- 
co Salviati, on the other Fra Malatesta Sacramoro, also 
wearing copes. Behind them came a great multitude of 
men and women, carrying lighted tapers in their hands. 
The singers led off, in a loud voice, the 68th Psalm : * Exurgat 
Deus, et dissipentur inimici Ejus'! 

The great Loggia de Lanzi had been arranged for the 
ordeal; the Dominicans to occupy the western part; the 
Francescans the eastern. But though the great body of the 
Francescans were there when the party of San Marco 
marched in to the thunder of their Psalm, Fra Guiliano 
Rondinelli the champion of the Francescans who it had 
finally been arranged should enter the fire with Fra Domenico 
Buonivicini of the Dominicans was not there. He was 
somewhere in the palazzo in consultation with the Signoria. 

Now the enemy began to invent every excuse to delay. 
They said that the red vestment worn by Era Domenico 
had been enchanted by Savonarola; when that was removed 
they objected to his habit, and when that was exchanged with 
one of the brethren of San Marco, they objected to his 
standing beside the great padre, he might enchant the other 
garment; and they continued in this way until the day began 
to wear away; and the populace restless for the beginning of 
the Sperimento, cried out in unreasoning passion that the 
party of San Marco should ascend the platform alone. 

The Signoria had caused to be placed a guard of soldiers 
upon the piazza, to prevent a riot, yet each party had their 
own armed adherents. Dolfo Spini was there with five 
hundred men under Marcuccio Salviati. 



94 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

The Arrabbiati had planned in case of tumult to rush 
forward and kill Savonarola at once, now they believed was 
there opportunity and they began to advance; but Marcuccio 
Salviati, in a quick glance seeing all, keeping his men in their 
place in front of the Loggia, made a line on the ground with 
his sword, and shouted, "Whoever passes this line shall know 
the strength of the arms of Marcuccio Salviati!" and the 
treacherous men dared not come nearer. 

Now a heavy thunder-storm broke over the scene, but the 
people unmovable in their purpose to behold the great ordeal 
would not depart. There was another dispute over Fra 
Domenico carrying a crucifix and at last a final disagreement 
upon the sacrament being carried within the flames. 

The Francescans now had the excuse they had wished for, 
to refuse to actually undergo the test. And in the midst of 
the conflict, the Signoria sent their final command that the 
ordeal should not be enacted. The people were enraged, 
had they not waited through the long hours, waited through 
the blindening storm, for the word and life of the prophet of 
Florence to be put to the final test for the fiery vision of the 
miracle. 

At this moment, Salviati, the brave soldier disciple, rushed 
forward, forming a crescent (luna) of his men and crying out, 
'* Padre follow me, for I will defend you as long as my life 
shaUlast!" And so guarded the padre and the Dominican 
brothers, as they trod the dark way back to the convent of 
San Marco. 

There the padre groped alone down the terraced walk to 
the chapel, where the women were still kneeling in prayer, 
and slowly repeated to the dim silences more than to the 
kneeling ones, all the struggle and longing of the day of 
Trial. 

When one arose from her place nearest the altar, and cast- 
ing herself at his feet, waited until his voice had trailed away 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 95 

into the majestic stillness, then spoke answering the un- 
uttered cry of his life. 

"Padre, I have fulfilled all, followed the French legate to 
where he placed a paper, in the hand of Ercole de Este. 
Yes even Duke Ercole the son of the hated daughter of the 
Medici! Beheld it all from a covert as they stood in the 
dusk of the palace garden! Beheld the Duke's face as it 
grew darker than the approaching night!" Her voice sank 
to a low, deep note as if the pent-up longing of her life 
struggled for expression; "O Padre, it was good to see that 
darkness, to know that the Avenger had touched the house 
of Este, and to see the look of dark when Ercole de Este 
knew that his villainy was unmasked!" 

The approach of the brethren through the portals at that 
moment, silenced the woman's voice. And the prophet 
turned to his sohtary cell, crushed with that supreme weari- 
ness when all the minor notes of life are forgotten. From 
below came the wild surge of the disappointed mob that 
filled the piazza of San Marco, with no uncertain note in 
their low dirge of madness, but he heard them not. 

Even Florence was forgotten, and afar through the im- 
penetrable mountain walls, floated the shimmering mirage of 
a dream, from the banks of the river Po, upward toward the 
glittering campanile of the palace of Ferrara. And the face 
of a girl was one with the hovering mist- ways. Once more 
the far-off chimes sounded the notes of beauty of truth — of 
supreme faith that they were to whisper forth to a world. 



XVII 

THE OPENING PORTALS 

"And when the imprisoning years 

Shall fetter me no more, 

Than open wide thy door, 

O heart! the secret door of unshed tears!" 

THE shadows of earth were deepening, hour after 
hour the storm grew in momentum, until it be- 
came one mad whirlwind of passionate fury 
against the prophet-monk who had so long led 
from his high pinnacle of vision the spiritual longing of a 
great city. 

It was on the evening of the next day that the cry was 
raised; "To San Marco! and with fire!" and caught up in 
every quarter of the city. It was one of those hours when 
the Demon of Hate seems to enter into the very heart of a 
people, and to lead them on toward the utter dark. 

Gathering in the great piazza, the mob rushes furiously 
through the narrow streets, two of the known followers of 
the padre, alone in the way, meet the first touch of madness 
with instant death. Now they crowd into the narrow clois- 
tered enclosure of the convent. The assault is begun with a 
great shower of stones poured into the chapel where a little 
company are still at prayer. 

Without the knowledge of the prior, some who had beheld 
the gathering storm, had stored a quantity of arms in the 
recesses of the convent. Now a few prepared for a defense. 

96 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 97 

Soon "Fra Benedetto, with a helmet on his head and a breast- 
plate over his Dominican habit was rallying his forces; and 
shouts of Viva Cristo! were heard mingling with the noise 
of armor, disturbing the quiet of those cloisters so long the 
abode of silence, prayer and meditation. " 

The prior with Fra Domenico attempted to appease the 
tumult, to persuade the brethren to lay down their arms, 
but in vain. Then the prior putting a cope over his robe, and 
with a crucifix in his hand purposed to go forth and give 
himself to the mob, but for a time was held back by the 
pleadings of his friends. Now he took the Sacrament in his 
hands, and asking the brethren to follow, went in procession 
around the cloristers, thence to the altar choir. There with 
a voice that swept in its outreach of faith far beyond the 
surgings of the mob, he whispered, "Oh, my children, prayer 
is our only weapon!" and all answered with the song prayer, 
"Salvium fac populum Teum, Domini," (Save thy people O 
Lord!)" 

The assault deepened, fire being apphed to burn down the 
doors. And Francesco Valori, he who had ever been the 
Simon Peter of the prophet's cause, now in his great zeal 
ventured out into the streets to get help and was slain at 
his own door, by some of the Tornabuoni and the Ridolfi, who 
had long held a feud with him. At this crises the treacherous 
Signoria demanded that the prior give himseK up to them to 
answer the false charges of his enemies. And though there 
were still strong hopes of defense, the great leader could be 
restrained no longer from the sacrifice: "Ought not the 
shepherd to lay downi his life for the sheep?" he murmured, 
and gathering his brethren roimd he gave his last word to 
them: 

"My children, before God with the enemy already in the 
convent, I confirm to you my doctrine. That which I have 
spoken I have received from God, and He is my witness in 



98 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

heaven that I do not lie. I did not know that the whole city 
was to turn against me; but the will of the Lord be done. 
My last counsel is this : let faith, patience, and prayers be 
your arms. I leave you with anguish and grief, to put my- 
self into the hands of my enemies. I know not whether they 
will take away my life; but I am certain that if I must die, 
I shall be able to aid you in heaven more than I have been 
able to do on earth. Be comforted, embrace the cross, and 
with that you will find the harbor of safety." 

Now as the prior paused for a moment, in the attitude of 
prayer, in the library of the convent, one approached, his 
face disfigured beyond recognition by the blood from an 
undressed wound, one arm hanging limp at his side, and 
kneeling down pleaded that even now, he might be received 
into the Brotherhood. Something in the pleading note of 
his voice, and the uplifted gesture of one strong arm, revealed 
to the prior the lonely artist in the far mountain fastnesses. 
He who had struggled through the long days toward the face 
of the Ideal; he who had reached the great hour of devotion, 
as he stood by the padre's side, when the smoke of the Vanita 
ascended to the Heavens. 

"Padre," the artist whispered now; "It is realized, the 
picture in its beauty, its divine harmony glows just before 
me — ^perfected if only I can work here in this place of prayer — 
— of vision!" 

The prior only answers with his benediction, his prayer 
out over the far longing of a life, then with the brave Fra 
Domenico, goes forth into the midst of the mob, who with 
curses and shouts of derision hurry them through the night 
toward the Palazza. Where they are brought before the 
magistrates of the city, the Gonfaloniere, and after a mock 
show of justice committed to cells in the prison house. 

Then on the next day and the next, came the trial of cruel 
mockery and scourgings. There was the torture of the 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 99 

Medieval court, and the unjust disquisitions, all to bring 
him to deny his vision and his life. 

The tenth of May came, the day the Monna Ghita, had 
whispered, that she could bring the sure word from the palace 
prison of Ferrara. Through the long hours Girolamo Savon- 
arola had watched from the narrow casement of the cell, 
unheeding all else, the way down the long white corridors. 
Yet no word, Charles of France, had expired in his great 
palace, the very day of the Ordeal by Fire; and Savonarola 
felt by all the deep intuition of sympathy, the unity of suffer- 
ing, that without a word today, it meant the outer darkness 
for the earth — life of Maria the child of the Strozzi. 

The morning found the padre, crouched in a corner of the 
cell, in a low stupor of despair, when they called again to 
the judgment chamber and to torture. 

And now at the touch of the torture, the rope around him 
again, by which he was drawn with great violence to the 
ceiling, and there suspended, there came no other thought 
but that of Maria, the fairest child of all Ferrara — of her 
alone in the dark of the living tomb of the palace prison. 

And when the mocking tones of the enemy asked again 
of his prophecies whether they were of God or of man, the 
voice of the strong man wavered, the vision seemed blurred 
and marred in the vast unknown spaces of life. And this 
wavering tone was put down by the prevaricator, the hired 
scribe, Cecconi, as denial of his great life-mission. 

It was on the thirteenth day of the trial, between the 
night and the breaking of the dawn, that a woman might 
have been seen, creeping along the via near the portals of 
the prison. She paused a moment to view the accesses to 
the formidable place, then drawing from her bosom a bag of 
gold, counted over the glittering coins, as if they were the 
beads of a rosary prayer; "Yes gold," she muttered to her- 



100 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

self, "It can buy all, it can pave the way to any hidden 
chamber! was it not through it, that I reached past the 
guard of a palace, to my child? My child, the greatest 
Duke of Ferrara, " she repeated the words over and over, 
as if the sound were comforting; "the boy that they, the 
house of Medici, had robbed me of, — ^yes to where he lay 
dying. " 

The woman put her hand to her heart, as if to keep back 
the great surge of feeling, that she might reach forward 
toward this great service toward a life that had been crushed 
and darkened by the same dread power. Then a quick step 
through an unbarred portal, the glimmer of gold as her hand 
passed to the outstretched palm of the porter. The stealthy 
stride through the long corridors — the clink of the cell door, 
and the kneeling figure of the woman before the couch, where 
the prisoner lay in the dim light of the dawn. 

A gleam touched the face of the padre, when he recognized 
the woman of Ferrara, and he sprang up, eagerly grasping 
for the message. 

"Padre," she said slowly, "Maria de Strozzi the fairest of 
Ferrara is free — ^forever free from the bondage of the House 
of Este and the Medici! The order of Charles of France, 
was fulfilled. But the legate with the direct command, was 
detained in the mountain fastnesses coming toward Ferrara. 
Yet he must have reached the palace before the death of his 
master. " 

In the next hour of that day, the summons came again 
to the judgment hall and to torture, but now the touch of 
the utmost torture could not move Era Girolamo Savonarola, 
the machinations and cross questions of the perjured jurists 
cause him to waver, nor all the craft of Ceccone the scribe, 
to subscribe one word of weakness. And as the throng of 
dark-browed men turned toward him they caught a vision 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 101 

that they had never beheld upon the face of mortal man 
before — the triumphant light of fulfillment. 

It was on the twenty-second day of May, 1498, that Fra 
Girolamo Savonarola, prior of San Marco, was condemned 
to die, by the supreme Tribunal of Florence, the Gonfaloniere 
and the Eight. On the morning of the twenty-third, the 
Vigil of the Ascension, the prior with his two faithful Domini- 
can brothers, Fra Domenico and Fra Salvestro, were led 
forth to meet death upon scaffolds erected on the western 
side of the great piazza, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. 
The same spot that had had been chosen for the Ordeal by 
Fire. As the prophet-monk stood upon the scaffold, tower- 
ing again in his great spiritual vision and power above the 
multitudes, below stretched the valley of the Arno, and 
beyond in gleaming distances the snow crowned mountain 
heights. There was a whispered prayer over Florence, as 
the vision of the dying man swept over the uncounted multi- 
tudes. Florence that he had loved, toward whose deep 
heart-life he had spoken the voice of the Divine. Then be- 
yond, past barriers of life, to where on the banks of a river, 
a boy and girl had stood together, weaving from the hovering 
mist-ways, a dream of truth and beauty towards a world. 
And above toward the unknown worlds of light and glory 
where the face of the vision lingered. 

For the fairest child of Ferrara, was indeed free from every 
shadow of earth. The night of the Tenth, the Duke of 
Ferrara to escape the mandate of the dead king, and to hide 
his wrong and shame, had caused her to be slain by the hand 
of an assassin in a secret chamber of the palace. 



EPILOGUE 

THE villa of the Savonarola in the Via del Bardo, 
of Ferrara, was shrouded in darkness, as the Mon- 
na Ghita stole through the halls toward the 
shadowed place where the mother of the martyred 
Prophet of Florence knelt alone. There was no word as 
Ghita, touched haK reverently the silken gown of the 
woman whom the world declared true and beautiful, and who 
had known the unstained joy of love — of motherhood — of 
life, — who now looked toward the utter dark. 

Then as a low, hoarse sob of grief broke the silences, the 
unknown woman whispered, "Madonna do not weep, for 
the glory of the Heavens was over your child, — the bitterness 
of death had departed, and there was only the joy of the 
Eternal in that last hour. 

"Listen — " then through the hush, she repeated the way 
that had led into the inner sanctum of the life of the great 
prophet-monk, murmering; "If you could have seen the 
joy, when he knew her free from the shadow of darkness — 
beheld the joy that only deepened on the face of the martyr. " 
Now again and again she whispered that word of the 
prophet through the calms of the great Duoma; "Find the 
far meaning of sorrow, in love, in deeds of charity toward 
others. " The message now not alone to the forsaken Monna 
Ghita but to the weeping mother of a prophet. 

Again the mystic mist-ways were hovering over Ferrara, 
as through the Via del Bardo the Madonna Elena Savonarola, 

102 



THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 103 

and Monna Ghita passed, their hands laden with fruit and 
cakes for the sick and the forsaken in the dark viae of 
the city. 

As the day deepened, and the noon day sun shone upon 
the face of the mother of Era Girolamo Savonarola, Duke 
Ercole de Este, with a troop of soldiers pressing along the 
narrow via, drew his charger back in sudden terror; "Piero, 
it must be some heavenly visitant! Some Madonna of the 
skies! Sent, — " Only the darkness of his own soul heard 
that final word. 

In the year that followed the night of turmoil in the con- 
vent. Era Bartolommeo the artist, painted only a fresco 
for the cemetery of Santa Maria Nuovo, and the portrait 
known as "The Prophet of God." There followed months 
of darkness when he could not whisper a thought of beauty, 
until he found peace in the cloisters of San Marco. There 
the clear vision came, that he had reached out toward through 
the far mountain ways; and he gave to the world the "Vision 
of the Madonna to St. Bernard," for a chapel in the Badia. 
The great works for the Cathedral in Lucca, and the paintings 
that are now shown in the galleries of Florence. But to 
those who had followed through the shadows, the greatest 
expression was the rapt face of a Madonna, uphfted toward 
a mist of cloud, painted on the outer wall of the place 
of prayer where Era Girolamo Savonarola had lived and suff- 
ered. 

Marchese has given the word — "On the walls of San 
Marco, the observer may see the revival of the Florentine 
school of painting in its best days in the works of two artists 
only Era Bartolommeo Angelico, and Era Bartolommeo — 
the one the painter of the Ideal, the other of Form. The 
first embraces and closes the old school of Tuscany. * * * 
The second represents and expresses the modern school. 



104 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 

and in him we may see Masaccio, Lorenzo de Credi, Andrea 
del Sarto, Buonarrotti. * * * Great men both, noble 
ornaments of the retreat they adorr^d and almost conse- 
crated by their genius and virtues. " 



107 89 

























4 ♦ 

:p<p ' 



V^^' 


























\f^ « Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 

jV "^fj. ' Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 



:** 0^ ^ **7?rrf* <V <. Treatment Date: QFC - 2001 

0^ ojv» -r^ "^ ** ^^ •l^tiir* '^ PreservatlonTechnologies 

>, ^ %**J^^alr^* -Jw* K^V^^^* A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

3r 0/?^S^>|||^* ^*0 V^ •i^tm^^^'* 111 Thomson Part? Drive 



0* 



1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry' Township, PA 1606S 
(724)779-2111 




'• .«* 












?-- >^^ 



0» • 











'/°- 



Q^ *' 









